THEY TRIED TO SMUGGLE 6 TONS OF DRUGS: Confirmed indictment against the Balkan cartel, INCLUDING A MAN WITH 1,000 FACE

The indictment brought by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for organized crime against the so-called Balkan cartel was confirmed after the Appellate Court in Belgrade rejected all appeals as groundless and upheld the decision of the High Court in Belgrade, Special Department for Organized Crime.

Since the indictment has been confirmed, the court should soon schedule a preliminary hearing, and then the beginning of the trial of the criminal group.

– Appeals against the indictment were filed by Ljubiša Lindo and his defense attorney, as well as defense attorneys. Radisav Radović, Deniz Mihajlović, Nikola Đorđević, Milovan Zdravković, Miroslav Starčević, Ivan Cvetković, Dragan Nikolić, Vladan Soldo, Zoran Jakšić, Gligorij Peljević, Miloš Radisavljević. Dragan Đorđević, Milan Matić, Mladen Lazarević, Miloš Jovanović, Aleksandar Ilić, Marko Radovanović and Mirko Pavlović – according to the announcement of the Court of Appeal.

As stated, this court considers that there is sufficient evidence that indicates a justified suspicion that the defendants have committed the criminal acts they are charged with.

– In any case, all the collected evidence will be the subject of an adversarial procedure that will be conducted before the court of first instance and on which the court of first instance will give its assessment after the evidence procedure has been carried out, whereby after the presentation of each piece of evidence in front of the court, the parties can present objections, and then the assessment of the evidence conducted at the main trial, which will be the subject of the court’s evaluation in the next phase of the criminal procedure in question – it is stated in the court’s decision.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, let’s remind you, in November of last year brought an indictment against 20 suspects for international smuggling of almost six tons of cocaine, and the name of Zoran Jakšić, who is in prison in Peru where he is serving a sentence of 25 years, was mentioned for the first time found in an indictment in Serbia.

Let us remind you that Jakšić was arrested in 2016 and became known as the man with “1000 faces”, as he had as many as 40 false identities at the time of his arrest.

– His identity was discovered only on the basis of fingerprints and biological traces. By the way, he attracted a lot of attention in recent years, during his stay behind bars, as he allegedly turned his cell into a disco, where even prostitutes came, but also because the tunnel through which he planned to escape was discovered – recalls the interlocutor of Kurir.

Let us remind you that in May of last year, 13 members of the “Balkan cartel” were arrested in a major operation by the police and the prosecutor’s office, and the indictment charges them with drug smuggling from December 2019 to August 2020. According to reports, three large seizures of drugs suspected to have been attempted by members of this criminal group.

– The first seizure was in February 2020, when 4.5 tons of cocaine were seized on the ship “Aresa” in Aruba, 1.2 tons of cocaine were seized in June in Belgium, and another 742 kilograms of the same drug in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in August 2020 – reminds the interlocutor of Kurir.

In addition to Jakšić, the indictment also includes Mladen Lazarevic, the godfather of Pink Panther Milan Ljepoja, who, according to the indictment of the same prosecution, was killed by members of the Veljko Belivuk clan, then Miroslav Starčević, and Ljubiša Lindo, who was previously labeled as the king of synthetic drugs.

By the way, after the arrest of this criminal group, the police announced that during the search of the apartments and other premises used by the suspects in Belgrade, Nis, Loznica, Subotica and Zrenjanin, two sniper rifles and three automatic rifles, five pistols, one of which is automatic, and four silencers were found.

On that occasion, a bomb, 24 detonator capsules and five devices for remote triggering of detonators, 13 packages of plastic explosives, an optical sight, hundreds of pieces of ammunition of different calibers, wigs and silicone masks were found.

– In addition to the large amount of money found in the apartments they used, three plastic barrels with more than 2.7 million euros were found in one of the locations in a specially constructed hidden area. Also, during the search at the mentioned locations, several luxury cars and expensive watches were found – it was announced at the time.

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