Vuciqi's ties to the crime world, New York Times journalist details

A long article, originally published on the New York Times website, raises numerous accusations on Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's ties to the organised crime world. Reporter Robert F. Worth details crimes committed by the Veljko Belivuk gang, the head of the football team's fan group, the Belgrade Partizan. He and 29 members of the group were arrested in 2021.

“at a closed-door trial session, Veljko Belivuk said his gang was organised for the needs and on the order of Aleksandar Vucici, according to court transcripts”, says in the New York Times article.

He described some of the jobs the gang claimed to have done for the government, such as intimidating political rivals” and having met personally with President Vucic. These charges were rejected by the Serbian president, who, however, refused to comment on the allegations against New York Times.

Journalist Worth says he does not believe Mr. Vucic has created Serbian nationalist criminal gangs, but he has undoubtedly exploited them for strengthening his power.

He has been very effective in controlling almost all the power levers in Serbia, and for that he has used all options in the country”

Serbian “Nationalism sparked the 1990s Yugoslavia war. So it has long existed, and the same can be said of organized crime. I think he's an opportunist politician who really wants to be in power. He has been very effective in controlling almost all the power levers in Serbia, and for that he has used all possibilities in the country”, says New York Times journalist Robert F. Worth.

University Professor John Hopkins and early Balkan development observer Daniel Seweer share the same opinion.
He has restored autism in Serbia and tolerated not only football gangs but also organised crime”

There is no politician who, under current circumstances, could be established in Belgrade, without a kind of adaptation to organised crime and its Secret Service. That's pretty clear. The question is whether Vucic is part of the problem, or part of the solution. And overall, I'm convinced that he's part of the problem because of his behavior. He has restored autism in Serbia and tolerated not only football gangs but also organised crime”, University of John Hopkins professor Daniel Serer says of Voice of America.
Veljko Belivuk's group had been arrested even before, but in all cases it had managed to avoid sentences because of links that until 2021 were suspected to exist between it and the Serbian state.

The support Belivuk and his friends received from police and the interior ministry over the past decade has been documented in court evidence, phone wiretapping and photographs. The suggestion that all of this could have happened without Vuciq's knowledge causes laughter in Belgrade”, New York Times went.
Officially against Veljko Belivuk's group burdens charges of various crimes, including several monstrous crimes such as cutting off victims' limbs, mainly members of rival criminal groups. After the massacre, the parts of the disabled bodies, reports the New York Times article, have been thrown into a meat - cutting machine.

Serbia's Interior Ministry has published this video on platform “YouTube” where it says that except for the Bellivuk group's weapons and explosives during the raids, it has also found the meat machine with the DNA of suspected victims.
While Mr. Vucic, according to the New York Times article, exercises control over almost every aspect of public life, arresting the Bellivuk group may be one of the few decisions the Serbian president could not control.

Serbian analysts risk nationalists in case of agreement with Kosovo
The evidence in this case came from a Belgian EUROPOL team who, after two years of efforts, failed to decipher the Sky ECC app for phone messages, a preferred cocaine traffickers' communication tool in Europe. There all data for the Veljko Belivuk group was discovered, one thing authorities in Serbia can no longer avoid. American journalist says he expects the ongoing EUROOPOL investigation to uncover criminal links among different ethnic groups in the Balkans.

This European investigation conducted by Europol really revealed these criminal networks in a way that had never been done before. They're still investigating the messages they deciphered. So, I think there are many others that haven't been reported yet. One noteworthy thing is that these criminal qualms often exceed politics. People may be on different ethnic sides, but when it comes to money, they will cooperate. I think we'll find out more over time about how these criminal networks work”, says journalist Worth.

The New York Times article also mentions the danger that the Serbian president can promote a war aimed at creating the Serbian World, the nationalistic idea of controlling all territories where Serbs live. That also means sending the army for annexation of northern Kosovo.
According to New York Times, this concern keeps European diplomats up at night. However, Europeans, along with American officials, according to analyst Daniel Serer, continue to offer firm support to the Serbian government and generally autocrats in the Balkans.

Western officials are deceiving themselves and doing so for a purpose. They have given up liberal democracy in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in general in the Balkans. And what they're doing is trying to use nationalists to preserve peace, basically, to stabilise the region. This is an idea that has always existed in the West, but it has become very prominent in President Biden's administration and it tends very much towards being positive about Belgrade, no matter what happens to the Voice of America, University professor John Hopkins, Daniel Serwer.

American journalist Robert F. Worth says there are Serbs who think the situation in general is even worse than in Slobodan Milosevic's time.
Some Serbs have told me that in some ways the situation is worse than it was in Milosevic's time”

Some Serbs have told me that in some ways the situation is worse than it was in Milosevic's time. Justice is more politicised than it was at the time. There is no bloody civil war anymore and this is a good thing, but Serbia is now a place where police, at certain levels and at different times, have been involved in criminal activities”, says Mr. Worth.

The journalist says he has never been detained while in Serbia, though he does not rule out the possibility of being bugged without realizing it.

We met at a cafe and within a few minutes he said we were being watched and we are not sure”
I didn't mention this in the article, but I had a meeting with a former senior Serbian police official who wanted to give me some information, but he was very afraid of the consequences. We met at a coffee shop and within a few minutes he said they were watching us and we're not sure. I tried to contact him again, and I offered him confidence to speak, to tell me what he had to say, but he decided not to speak in”.
The same sense of wiretapping, the journalist shows, had former President Boris Tadic, who at a meeting with him approached him, whispering to “some of Bellivuk's friends may have sat next to us”. /voa