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December 31, 1997
BY JEFFREY FLEISHMAN
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Like the brute from "Popeye," his nickname was Bluto.
He was minutes from getting whacked
when he sat down at Mama Mia's restaurant with
a briefcase, holding 750,000 German marks ($420,000).
The police would later hush
things by saying Bluto, Serbia's deputy police
minister, was carrying only kiwifruits (nobody
knows why).
The door opened, and a hit man with
a Heckler machine gun stepped in. Bluto was
halfway through a plate of spaghetti when seven
bullets danced across his back, and
another body bag was unzipped in this corrupt
town.
The mafia in Yugoslavia is a lurid
and surly lot. They are suspected war criminals who
own casinos and sometimes marry folk singers;
politicians who monopolize everything
from gasoline to mobile phones and candy bars;
thieves who steal BMWs and kidnap
show dogs; crooked cops with judo belts. And
they have nicknames like Frankie, Clubs
and the infamous, but recently departed, Butt-end.
Like Bluto, whose real name was
Gen. Radovan Stojicic, they are Bosnian war's leftover
wise guys.
When ethnic hatreds tore Yugoslavia
apart in the early 1990s, someone had to smuggle
gasoline, hard currency, coffee and weapons across
battle lines and around international
economic sanctions. Low-rung thugs and guys who
once waited tables and drove cabs
quickly became bosses to supply the Serbian state.
"Smuggling, in those days, was a
patriotic act," said one Western diplomat.
Corruption's reach
The war is over, but most economic
sanctions will remain in force. Corruption is
becoming so ingrained that this country -- which
wobbles on the verge of collapse -- is still
run by gangsters and some of the most illicit
politicians in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia's
mafia has in effect become its government, with
President Slobodan Milosevic doing little
to clean up the corruption.
"Milosevic is the Godfather," said
Mladen Bozano, a wartime cigarette smuggler who
manages a casino. "He is bigger than Gotti and
Gambino. Our country is like what the U.S.
was in the 1930s, or like the mafia gangs that
rose in Russia after communism."
The gangland atmosphere in government,
banking and industry is turning bloody.
"They're starting to eat their own tails," said
Milan St. Protic, director of the Center for
Serbian Studies. "They've stolen everything,
and now they don't have money to pay the
police and the other pillars of their power.
They're desperate."
In the last 11 months, Belgrade's
hit men, with their silencers and machine guns, have
been taking out those close to Milosevic's inner
circle.
Vladan Kovacevic, known as Clubs,
was shot four times in the head in February while
parking his car. Kovacevic was close to Milosevic's
son, Marko, a 26-year-old with
bleached-blond hair. Marko is a curious fascination
in Belgrade. He uses his pager to send
"I Love You" messages to his mother and brags
that his disco on the outskirts of Belgrade
is the only one in Yugoslavia where a dancer
can carry a gun.
Kovacevic kept Marko in sports cars
-- a costly task, given that the president's son has
smashed at least 20 BMWs and Ferraris in recent
years.
Stojicic, known as Bluto, was killed
April 11. During the war, he led the Serbs in the battle
for Vukovar. As deputy police minister, Stojicic,
a judo expert, had direct access to
Milosevic and was tapped by the president to
repress the two million ethnic Albanians who
want independence from Serbia.
Milosevic stood over Stojicic's
casket. Directly behind him was Zeljko Raznatovic, known
as Arkan -- the leader of the paramilitary unit
called the Tigers. The group massacred
Muslims during the war, and Western diplomats
believe Milosevic has protected Arkan,
who is wanted for war crimes.
Arkan has been indicted in seven
other countries for more mundane crimes. Belgium
wants him for bank robbery; Holland, for jewel
theft. He escaped from both countries, and
there is no indication that he will be extradited.
Arkan married a popular folk singer and
runs Belgrade's Grand Casino, which caters to
the international jet set.
The third slaying to hit close to
Milosevic was that of Zoran Todorovic, known as Butt-
end, who was gunned down Oct. 24 in front of
his offices at Beopetrol, a gas and oil
company. A smuggler during the war, Todorovic
was part of the gas and oil monopoly in
Yugoslavia.
Milosevic wept at Todorovic's funeral.
The president then read a letter written by
Todorovic's widow, Mira, who was being consoled
by gurus in India.
The impact of silence
"Bullets are flying around Milosevic's
ears, and he's quiet," said Aleksandar Ciric, a writer
with the Belgrade magazine Vreme. "The police
do nothing," and criminals get richer.
The gunfire is rattling the realm
of the "new composed" -- a term for Belgrade's nouveau
riche, the war profiteers who build villas and
talk on cellular phones from saunas and strip
joints.
But most of Belgrade lives in another
world where unemployment is 50 percent, where
the middle class has been wiped out, where people
carry around bags of cash because
they don't trust banks, and where crippled war
victims beg in the streets.
"So how do normal people survive?"
asked one diplomat. "We have security guards and
washerwomen at our embassy who are doctors and
PhDs."
Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade
police chief who holds a black belt in karate and
speaks five languages, said layers of corruption
had plunged Yugoslavia into a "dark
zone." Nicovic resigned from the force in 1992
when, he said, he saw "the criminal
element rising to the top."
Economic sanctions during and after
the war have led to increased drug trafficking,
money laundering and hordes of weapons dealers
who hawk everything from Uzis to
missiles. Since being shunned by much of the
international community for its aggression in
the war, Serbia has also been cut out of Interpol,
the worldwide police agency that tracks
organized crime.
Police, who often get paid a few
weeks late, are easy to keep on the take. Salaries have
dropped over the last five years from $1,500
a month to $277, Nicovic said. He said
economic sanctions were drying up cash reserves
and almost forcing corruption.
"The criminals aren't scared of
retaliation anymore," he said. "They are too strong now
...The world has made a paradise for criminals
right in the middle of Europe."