Zemun Clan

The Zemun Clan is one of the Belgrade clans of the Serbian Mafia. The name is based on the base of the clan i.e. Zemun, a municipality of Belgrade.

In 1992, the gang of "Peca" was arrested, one of the members was Dušan Spasojević, the later head of Zemun clan.^[1]

In September 2001, 700 kilos of heroin was found in a bank vault rented by the BIA in central Belgrade. The illegal safekeeping was never explained nor brought up.^[2] The Zemun gang had "special training courses" with the BIA, lending them information on Kosovo Albanian terrorists.^[2]

During the period that started with the Yugoslav wars and ended with the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in March 2003, connections between the mafia and the government were obvious and corruption was rampant in most branches of the government, from border patrols to law-enforcement agencies. On March 12, 2003, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated by former Serbian Special Operations Unit (Red Berets, transformed from Arkan's Tigers) Milorad Luković also known as Legija, member of the Zemun clan. Đinđić had connections within the Surčin for the earlier overthrowing of Milošević. The government set in motion a major bust on criminality in - "Operation Sablja" (English: Sabre), which led to more than 10,000 arrests. New Belgrade malls, a frequent place of gangsters, went down more than 20+% after the Operation^[3] 123 criminal groups were broken with 844 members awaiting trial; 3,949 people were issued criminal complaints, 28 kilos of heroin, 463 grams of Cocaine, 44 837 kilos of Marijuana, 4 960 synthetic drugs and 688 stolen cars were found by the day.^[4] Milan Sarajlić, the Deputy State Prosecutor of Serbia was arrested and confessed the involvement (being on payroll) with the Zemun clan.^[5] 140 kilos of marijuana is seized in Belgrade and 4 people are arrested in November, 2003.^[6] The Red Berets are dissolved on 23 March 2003.^[7]

In 2006 It was revealed that Dušan Spasojević, the gang leader of the Zemun clan, was a connection to Serbian Radicals leader Vojislav Šešelj, whom he had given information about high-profile murders carried out in Serbia, written about in Šešelj's two books (Spasojević under pseudonym Laufer)^[8]

In November, 2009, Argentine Police arrested 5 Serbian drug couriers and seized their 492 kilograms of cocaine in Buenos Aires,^[9] On October 31, 2009, Serbian police arrested over 500 people in the biggest anti-drug bust ever in Serbia.^[9] One of the largest drug busts in 2009.^[10] The routs of the drugs were from Uruguay and Argentina via Central alt. South Africa to Northern Italy alt. Turkey to Montenegro.^[9] Also, Serbian organized crime experts estimated 10,000 foot soldiers part of 5 major organized crime groups operating in Serbia.^[11] A courier package of 5 kilos cocaine was intercepted from Paraguay, 4 Belgraders were arrested.^[12] The busts were part of the Operation Balkan Warrior; an international drug smuggling case that involves mainly the Zemun clan, a name concluded as leader of the drug ring is Željko Vujanović.^[12][13]

People

References