At the end of September 2023, the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime published the second Global Organized Crime Index. According to this indicator, Serbia is the third in Europe and the leader in the region in terms of organized crime. This index, by analyzing the criminal markets and the activities of criminal persons in a given country, ranks the countries in this area. As for criminal persons, the explanation of the index states that politicians protect organized criminal groups in Serbia, which cooperate mostly with criminal groups from Montenegro. In addition, according to this index, the criminal market for drugs, illegal weapons and human smuggling/trafficking has developed in Serbia. In general, the fight against organized crime in Serbia was judged to be ineffective, especially in politically sensitive cases. Namely, Serbia is still at the top of European countries in terms of the volume of organized crime, as according to the first Global Organized Crime Index published in October 2021, it is second in Europe. In fact, Serbia has worse absolute scores than two years ago, but Ukraine took second place because the war in that country led to an increase in organized crime. Similar are the findings of the European Commission, which in its report on Serbia's progress from November 2023 made the same recommendations that Serbia should implement in the fight against organized crime, "Danas" writes.
One of the main criticisms is that Serbia does not have a strategic approach in this struggle because it only deals with individual cases. Proactive criminal/financial investigations are under-implemented. The role of the Security and Information Agency in criminal investigations has not yet changed and this agency continues to implement special measures in the fight against organized crime. This issue is particularly problematic because the agency is susceptible to political influence that can alter the course of criminal investigations. For the first time, this report explicitly mentions current cases of organized crime, such as Jovanjica, the trial of the crime clans of Darko Saric and Velko Belivuk.
Therefore, it is clear to important international organizations and institutions how the fight against organized crime in Serbia is going. Expert civil society organizations have been assessing for years how in Serbia, due to political influence on the security sector and the judiciary, i.e. because of captured institutions, there is a false fight against organized crime, which is created and encouraged by politicians. In this sense, it is not surprising that Serbia is the leader of organized crime in the region. At the national level, the police are exposed to enormous political influence, which affects the conduct of certain criminal investigations. The Police Directorate, as an organizational unit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, does not have the necessary independence for operational actions. In addition, the police have been working without a director for two years, and accordingly their work is easier to manipulate. That is why the Minister of the Interior as a political figure can formally or informally influence the work of the police in general and especially in the field of fighting organized crime. In addition, it is a practice for each new minister to bring his own trusted personnel, through which he can possibly influence the course of specific investigations. In addition to the fact that the police is being politicized, thanks to some police officers allegedly collaborating with criminal groups, it is also being partially criminalized. In the cases of Jovanić and Darko Šarić's criminal group, police officers were also charged as members of these organized crime groups. Also, the former deputy head of the Office for Combating Organized Crime was convicted of influencing a member of the Velko Belivuk clan./BGNES
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