THE SERBIAN authorities have called on the Cyprus government to grant them access to confidential banking information regarding the son and wife of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
The duo are accused of laundering millions of pounds from illegal cigarette smuggling through the island.
Earlier this year, Interpol issued arrest warrants against Marko and Mira Milosevic, who fled Serbia in 2001, and are widely believed to be hiding out in the Republics of the former Soviet Union.
Last month, Serbian newspaper Blic reported that a huge sum of Marko Milosevic’s illicit profits between 1996 and 2001 were transferred to Cyprus by planes.
The former head of Serbian state security, Rade Markovic was quoted as saying: “In police and security circles it is a very well known fact that Marko Milosevic was closely co-operating with certain criminal structures in the country and abroad. Involved in the illegal smuggling of cigarettes he became one of the biggest dealers of his kind, earning millions of dollars in profits.”
This week, Serbian police detained six more individuals suspected of involvement in the cigarette smuggling ring, Belgrade’s media said.
This is a third group of suspects detained in the framework of Operation Network.
The group includes the former chief of Nis police, the former advisor of Customs chief Mihalj Kertes, and the brother of the former chief of the public security sector, Radovan Stojcic-Badja.
Police said the masterminds of the two other groups are Marko and Mira Markovic.
Predrag Djordjevic is a Serbian businessman living on the island, who was involved in a case in which he claims he was a victim of Serbian money laundering operations taking place in Cyprus.
He yesterday told the Mail that this is not the first time the Serbian authorities have asked Cyprus for assistance.
“In the past, the Central Bank and the Justice Ministry have been very uncooperative,” he claimed.
“In fact, the B92 television station in Serbia ran a six-part investigative series in which they found the Cypriot authorities to be unhelpful.”
He added that the Serbian authorities have asked the EU for assistance by pushing Cyprus to co-operate.
“If you look through the European press, everybody is reporting that Cyprus has been used to launder money, so it is not only me saying this.”
It has also come to light that Italian prosecutors have filed charges against former high officials of Montenegro, involved in cigarette smuggling to Italy, who they claim laundered hundreds of millions through Cyprus.
Djordjevic also hit out at recent statements by the Financial Intelligence Unit that this was not the case.
“I am ready to challenge any of these false claims with hard evidence and can prove that the authorities are involved in a cover-up. I have bank statements of accounts, court evidence, testimonies, statements and other documents to back myself up.”
Responding to the story, Elli Morfakis, in charge of the Justice Ministry’s Legal International Co-operation Unit said: “Over the past three years, all requests from Serbia have been executed, apart from one, which was not possible for certain reasons.”
She added that, “the execution of requests is done in accordance with our national law and in order to proceed with certain requests, we must check whether the preconditions of our national law are being met.”
