A special unit of the Austrian police specialized in the battle against the drug mafia arrested Ivan Skender (43) and three other men in the town of St. Veit am Vogao, not far from Graz on 13 August 2003. Ivan Skender, with residence in Solin Croatia, near Split, but officially registered in Grude, Herzegovina, has been known to the Croatian public as the leading Croatian drug boss since the fall of 2000.

This arrest also confirmed the police suspicions of Skender’s Medjimurje smuggling connections and of Cakovec as a significant transit hub in the drug and weapons trade.After months of surveillance and cooperation with the Croatian authorities, the Austrian police arrested Skender and his associates at the village graveyard when he tried to sell two kilograms of cocaine to an undercover officer. This fully confirms the suspicion that Skender is one of the leading members of the Croatian drug milieu, following Nacional’s discovery in October 2000. It took almost three years for Skender to fall into the hands of police and to finally bring down the image that Ivan Skender, with the help of his team of attorneys led by Željko Olujić, wanted to build for himself, suing the newspapers and reporters, including the Nacional staff, who wrote about him as the man who organized a complicated network of illegal opiate trade in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Zagreb and Medjimurje, and who was connected with international drug circles, particularly in Austria and Germany.

Though the Croatian police listed Skender in the “blue book” among the 250 most dangerous Croatian criminals, and despite the fact that police were constantly watching him due to suspicions that he participated and organized the illegal opiate trade, arms and automobile smuggling into Yugoslavia, Ivan Skender tried desperately to deny all these claims and present himself instead as a poor and demobilized HV soldier living on a small veteran’s pension. All this despite the fact that he was closely connected to the main drug, arms and automobile smuggling organizers in Dalmatia and Herzegovina, Vinko Martinović Štela, Željko Maglov, General Ivan Andabak and high ranking police, SZUP and SIS officials, who offered him protection and allegedly made it possible for him to have access to secret police credentials, both civil and military.

Skender was armed with a handgun at the St. Veit graveyard when he was caught in the act in the midst of a funeral, together with four accomplices: Milan and Zdravko Novak from Mursko Središće, owners of the discobar Best, Vladimir Mikulić from the outskirts of Mursko Središće, a construction worker, and Marko Musterić, from Solin who owns a restaurant in Holland and who police suspect of participating in the financing of Skender’s operation of purchasing and selling drugs. This also confirmed the police suspicions of Skender’s Medjimurje smuggling connections and of Cakovec as a significant transit hub in the drug and weapons trade.

Considering the price of cocaine, the earnings on the street from the resale of drugs confiscated in the joint action by Austrian and Croatian police near Graz would have been about 200,000 Euro.

Skender was first heard of when Feral Tribune published a transcript of a working meeting in the Presidential Office held on 3 March 1997. Tudjman began the discussion on the Croatian drug mafia and criminal underground. “Who is Skender?” he asked then. Also present at the meeting were Defense Minister Gojko Šušak, presidential advisor Ivić Pašalić, director of HIS Miroslav Tudjman and Police Minister Ivan Penić who wanted to inform the president that the man by the name of Skender was very well known to the crime police in Zagreb. Sisak stated that it was Skender who was the main dealer of heroin and cocaine in Split, and that his network covered the whole of Dalmatia and Herzegovina and that he was in direct contact with Vinko Martinović Štela, who was recently convicted by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes committed against civilians in the Mostar region. From Šušak’s explanation, Tudjman realized that Skender, despite his numerous arrests, could not be captured by police, which proved that he enjoyed strong protection within the police and political structures.

It was obvious that Šušak, Penić, Tudjman Jr. and Pašalić, in fact everyone but President Tudjman, that Skender was enjoying powerful protection at the top levels of the police, defense ministry, SZUP and SIS, and that the period from 1993 to 1996 was his “golden age”. They all knew that Skender, acting in the shadows, had excellent connections in the influential military and civil structures, by which he controlled the Zagreb, Split and Herzegovinian drug and weapons markets, and who also delivered to the IRA and Kosovo Liberation Army, while stolen vehicles from Croatia were sent to Yugoslavia via Herzegovina.

Nacional was the first to begin investigating who Ivan Skender really is. We learned that the Croatian drug king, as Šušak first described him at the meeting with President Tudjman, was born in 1961 in a village near Lovrec in the Imotski area, that he has never been employed, that he holds Croatian veteran status and receives a veteran’s pension, that he has a family home and a motor vehicle. He is well protected by the civil and military police, and the HDZ politicians close to them. Skender had a successful cooperation with Vinko Martinović Štela and Ivo Šušak. They perfected the “Herzegovininan connection” in the smuggling of drugs and cars with the help of Ferdo Basic, a close friend of Ljubo Ćesić Rojs.

The Croatian police believes that Skender’s most trusted associate in that chain was HV Colonel Željko Maglov, former commander of the 73rd Brigade of the military police. Ivo Šušak, a relative of the late Defense Minister, returned from Bolivia in 1990. According to police findings, Šušak transferred his drug trading business from Bolivia to Croatia, and gave Ivan Skender a significant role in setting up the organization. All under the knowing eye of several of the leading SZUP figures at the time. During 1992, 1993 and 1994, cocaine arrived in Croatia via central American harbours, thanks to the “Bolivian connection” and heroin arrived from Turkey, via the “Herzegovinian connection”. Frequently, the drugs were hidden among arms which were under strict control, in well sealed trucks which entered into Croatia through Hungary. Skender set up good connections with the German and Croatian underground, and began to develop his organization in Zagreb, Slavonia and Medjimurje… The police identified Skender’s main associates as being Ante Livajić Klempo in Zagreb, Rudi Kocian in Medjimurje and Umberto Pinčić in Rijeka and the coastal regions.

In Zadar, Skender’s key man was Senko Perak, who was killed in summer 1998. First to be killed in the mafia confrontation was Perak’s son Damir, and then Senko was killed only one week later, after he accused the chief of the Zadar police, Svemir Vrsaljak, for the murder of his son. Though it was clear that the events in Zadar were an internal police battle for control over the drug market in Croatia, Peraks’ murder was obviously a blow by the competition, the Zagreb mafia, against Skender, whose business results had not slowed in five years. In Split, Skender’s network began to take hard blows when the Split police arrested Skender’s strongest dealers, Joško Marašović Fanfi, Siniša Dodoja Seki and Jurica Svalina Svala, who controlled a significant portion of the market in Split and central Dalmatia. However, only after the affair surrounding Maglov and the smuggling of stolen cars under the protection of the military police was revealed, was Skender’s influence in Split significantly weakened.

Up until the arrest of Vinko Martinović Štela, Skender’s strongest market was Herzegovina. The threesome of Šušak-Skender-Martinović, friends and partners, with the help and assistance of the military and civil intelligence agencies and the military police, were the organizers of a two way chain to Herzegovina and beyond, towards Montenegro, Republika Srpska, Federation BiH and Yugoslavia. They frequently sent convoys of expensive automobiles in that direction, under the police escorts of Colonel Maglov, recently accused of reselling drugs, while heroin came from the east in return. One kilogram of high quality heroin from Turkey, which arrived on the Croatian market from Kosovo and Montenegro, was paid for by Skender and Šušak with one to two stolen high class vehicles, meaning that the kilo of heroin cost about 18,000 DEM. The Muslim drug mafia was included via Sarajevo and Kiseljak. In Croatia, that same kilo of heroin sold for 35,000 DEM. The high quality heroin was mixed with additives, such that one kilo could earn at least 67,000 DEM.

This chain and business could not be developed by Skender alone, without the powerful protection of the police and HV. Skender had precise information about where he could appear and where he could not. During the police arrest of Vinko Martinović Štela in Split, Skender played a significant role in attempting to save his friend. He was also arrested, but quickly released by police. When Martinović was extradited to the Hague Tribunal, Skender continued to drive Štela’s armoured Mercedes. Not at any time in the long Maglov affair did the name of Ivan Skender appear. However, after this point, Skender was forced to pull back deeper into the shadows in order to prevent jeopardizing his powerful protectors at the top of the military hierarchy, who were included in the drug trade or knew of it.

Well informed sources today claim that the key role in getting Colonel Maglov and Zoran Doždor Juma out of prison, after which both men disappeared and a warrant was issued for them, was played personally by General Mate Lausić, then commander of the military police. Further, it is perfectly clear that Skender’s activities were known and supported by the key people in SIS in both Zagreb and Split.

Several years ago, it was suspected that there was a connection between Ivan Skender and General Ivan Andabak in the drug and arms trade. First and foremost, there was case of the 600 kilograms of cocaine, discovered in Rijeka. The cargo reached the Port of Rijeka via the “Bolivian connection” from a central American harbour. The container ship, which the police removed the cocaine from, then sailed on to Cypress, Egypt and completed its run in Africa’s Gambia. The police waited to see who would claim the goods. In the game of cat and mouse, the drug mafia managed to use clever maneuvers to outwit the Croatian police and the US DEA, considering that the goods were not intended for the Croatian market but Gambia, where the people sent to collect the cocaine were arrested. However, in Skender’s home, and in the home of his brother in Split, a large quantity of anti-tank mines were found and confiscated.

According to the findings in the investigation, the path again led to General Ivan Andabak. A total of 58 anti-tank mines were found in the garage of his brother’s house in Split in September 1998, allegedly hid there by Skender and his business partner Nediljko Karabatić Lun. Lun obtained the mines in BiH, and Skender organized their sale in Kosovo. Karabatić took all the heat on himself, however, police then found M-53 bombs, frames for automobile rifles, ammunition, grenade launchers and electroshock equipment in Skender’s home and in his brother’s home. However, the indictment raised against Karabatic and Skender in 1999 is still lying in someone’s desk drawer.