Nacional has learned from foreign diplomatic circles that there are suspicions that Zeljko Milovanovic, currently the most wanted fugitive in the Balkans, in hiding because of his participation in the murders of Ivo Pukanic and Niko Franjic, was assisted in his flight by members of the "Personal Guard" of Milorad Dodik, the Prime Minister of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

After the assassination of Pukanic and Franjic, Milovanovic spent several days at large, hiding on the territory of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and it is possible that he is still in hiding in that territory. After the assassination he returned, in fact, to his apartment in Doboj, where he has lived a quiet life, undisturbed, with his family. Milovanovic lived in the same building as did a high-ranking member of the Bosnia & Herzegovina intelligence and security agency. Also living in the same building is Vlado Durdevic, the former head of the Public Security Centre in Doboj. Milovanovic lived in Doboj, even though he was sought for war crimes, murders and robbery by the police forces of several of the countries that have emerged from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. He would have likely continued to have live there unmolested in any way had the Croatian police not, in a lighting-quick operation, uncovered the mafia clan that took part in the assassination of Pukanic and Franjic, and which confirmed that Milovanovic, together with Bojan Guduric, were the direct executors of the assassination.

After the Croatian police submitted this information to their colleagues in the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, they soon found his hideout and a great deal of evidence that linked Milovanovic to the assassinations in Zagreb, but not Milovanovic himself. He succeeded in escaping just minutes ahead of the arrival of the police, most likely because someone tipped him off. It was just a few days later that the first suspicions emerged as to who that could have been, and these suspicions further confirm that the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, which bears the inappropriate title of Republika Srpska, has emerged over the past few weeks as the most serious security threat to the countries on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and the entire Balkan region.

It is not only at the competent addresses in Croatia that there are suspicions that key assistance was provided to Milovanovic during his flight by persons who belong to the "Personal Guard" – a military-police unit – of Milorad Dodik, the Prime Minister of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. According to what security agencies have learned Milorad Dodik recently initiated the creation of a counter-intelligence service in his entity, in spite of the fact that the intelligence and security system in Bosnia & Herzegovina is centralised. Dodik is criticised for having recently called on Serbian employees within the federal security agencies, the OSA, SIPA and GS to join the Serbian entity's police force, which should, it is Dodik's aim, have a service within it that would have the prerogatives of state, and not entity authorities.

Security services suspect that Dodik is trying thereby to in fact create a personal guard that would answer only to him. Nacional has it from well informed diplomatic sources that Dodik spent several months carefully selecting the members of these units, that he personally studied their dossiers, that they are for the most part former military intelligence officers and commandoes, and that most are employed by the Volf, Integral, Centrunion and Alfa security firms from Zvornik, and the Laktasi-based Elite Security company. Security services have information that the Laktasi headquarters of Elite Security are housed on the premises of the Farmalend company building, located near Dodik's private estate. It is said that the members of Dodik's units are armed with modern weaponry, that they have a dozen armoured vehicles and sophisticated eavesdropping equipment, which Dodik when squaring off against his political opponents within the Serbian entity, and to eavesdrop on foreign diplomats in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

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The chief coordinator of the operations of these firms is considered to be Milos Cubrilovic, aka Cubri, who is also the head of Dodik's security, Velibor Sotra is considered to be the number two man in the unit, employed as the head of security at the Tvornici duhana Banja Luka tobacco producer. Security agencies have information that the headquarters of these units is located in downtown Banja Luka, and that one section is located in the building of the Integral company, housed right next to the new building of the government of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It is believed that the intelligence sector of this personal Dodik guard is led by Darko Matijevic, the former interior minister of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and that a key man in this unit is Milan Jolovic from Zvornik, the wartime commander of the notorious Vukovi s Drine (Drina Wolves) unit, which became a part of the Yugoslav Army supreme command after the war.

Security agencies also have another interesting piece of information – it has been revealed that are members of Dodik's "Personal Guard" and many members of the notorious Belgrade "Zemun" mob clan, which had been led by Milorad Ulemek Legija. Zeljko Milovanovic, the fugitive killer of Pukanic and Franjic, is also linked to this mob clan. All of this explains why there are suspicions that persons from Dodik's so-called Personal Guard assisted Milovanovic. They are wartime buddies, including a number of war criminal, who are now being protected by the leading politicians of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, are very well technically equipped and closely linked to the police force of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The possibility that Zeljko Milovanovic was helped by persons of Milorad Dodik's greatest personal confidence perhaps best illustrates what kind of entity it is and on what it is based. Not only did the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina emerge on the foundations of the shocking war crimes and genocide committed during the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina, but organised crime, corruption and political extremism are now its reality, permeating every pore of the local society.

Milorad Dodik bears the most responsibility for this. He was born on 12 March 1959. In Belgrade he graduated from the Faculty of Political Science. He is the president of the Federation of Independent Social Democrats. During the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina he was a deputy in the national assembly of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, where he formed a parliamentary club of independent deputies, which went on to become the opposition to the then dominant Serbian Democratic Party. In January of 1998, the then president of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Biljana Plavsic, nominated him as prime minister of the entity. In his first term he ruled until 2001, and subsequently went on to strengthen his political party and win the elections in October of 2006. Dodik and his party advocate a decentralised and federal Bosnia & Herzegovina, in which the Serbian entity would be a federal state. In practice Dodik is the untouchable ruler of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, who has of late begun to toughen his political rhetoric and has announced the possible secession of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Dodik's term in Bosnia & Herzegovina has been marked by numerous corruption scandals, and the burgeoning of organised crime.

Bosnia & Herzegovina's SIPA agency for investigations and security last January filed criminal charges against him with the Chief State Attorney of Bosnia & Herzegovina for awarding a concession, without public tender, to build the motorway from Banja Luka to Bosanska Gradiska to the Integral Engineering consortium out of Laktasi. At the helm of the consortium is Dodik's best man Slobodan Stankovic, and the amount of money the consortium is to get according to the contract surpasses several-fold the foreseen construction cost of the motorway. The criminal charges are accompanied by reports that implicate Dodik for malversations connected to the construction of the building of the Serbian entity's government in Banja Luka and the Banja Luka Radio & Television building, and the sales of the oil refinery in Bosanski Brod and the Gacko thermoelectric power plant. Within the Chief State Attorney's Office the criminal charges against Milorad Dodik will be covered by an international prosecutor from the Special Department for Organised Crime and Corruption (Department II), and the charges were simultaneously forwarded to the Anti-Corruption team at the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to Bosnia & Herzegovina.

these are not the only criminal charges against Milorad Dodik. Six years ago the District Attorney of Banja Luka filed criminal charges against Dodik, charging him of embezzling 3 million German marks from the budget in the late 1990s as the then prime minister of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. As a result of Dodik's sway, however, a full investigation was never carried out. For the same reason no one has to date seriously investigated the claims that Dodik profited from the sale of the telecom company of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, or the claims that Dodik used money of unknown origin to buy a villa in Belgrade's Dedinje quarter and a hunting ground in Serbia.

Dodik's political influence in the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina is growing, and he ahs further bolstered it at the October elections for local government in the entities of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Which is why Dodik has of late behaved increasingly churlishly and insolently, and gives no heed to the criminal charges. Milorad Dodik has over the past few months launched several initiatives that are of particular concern to the international community. He has initiated the issue of a referendum on the secession of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, the issue of reclaiming the authorities of the entity transferred to Bosnia & Herzegovina, the issue of reclaiming authority over state property, which has caused further tensions and conflict between the already confronted national and party blocs. Apparently without cause, Dodik got involved in the Serbian election campaign, giving strong support to Boris Tadic and his DS party. Tadic repaid him by encouraging the Serbian national administration and private sector to offer as much help as they could to the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Before that Serbia and the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina signed several agreements facilitating political and economic relations, which further deepened the conflict with Bosniac parties. It all led to an almost two year delay in reform processes in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and to a blockade in the functioning of institutions in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Many foreign diplomats read into it planned activities aimed at weakening the ties of the Serbian entity to other parts of Bosnia & Herzegovina, and strengthening ties with Serbia. That is why foreign diplomats were very concerned by Dodik's initiative to create an entity counter-intelligence agency, which currently functions as Dodik's personal guard, whose members are, among other things, suspected of assisting the flight of the killer of Ivo Pukanic and Niko Franjic. Foreign diplomats are further concerned by the fact that Dodik has never publicly denied that he wants to set up his own counter-intelligence agency, even though he has been openly accused of doing so in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Foreign diplomats are regarding another Dodik initiative with scepticism. Dodik is trying to strengthen the position of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina abroad by setting up so-called economic missions operating in Brussels, Serbia, Germany, Russia and Israel. Dodik has announced the opening of these missions in Croatia and the USA. Nacional has it from informed Croatian sources that the initiative will not be welcome in Croatia, and a similar reaction is expected in the USA. This can be discerned from the recent statements made by the former, and possibly future US diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, who has fingered Dodik as the key source of instability in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

By way of the so-called economic missions Dodik is promoting the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina abroad as an independent factor, independent of Bosnia & Herzegovina, in which he is demonstrating his secessionist aspirations. In order to secure the continued and independent functioning of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Dodik has strongly favoured the entry of Russian and Serbian capital in the privatisation process. Russian investors are backed by the Russian IEFK bank. A Russian company controls the oil refinery in Bosanski Brod, and it appears that further Russian incursions into the energy sector of the Serbian sector in Bosnia & Herzegovina are ahead. In April the largest Russian state company for the production and distribution of electric energy, Inter Rao, and the electric power authority of the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, signed a memorandum of understanding, wherein cooperation was agreed upon in the construction of facilities in the region and joint appearances on third markets. Dodik has also sought that the, otherwise most profitable, electric energy transmission system be separated from the electric power authority and made available to either Russian capital, or to a merger with the electric power authority in Serbia.

A significant role in the electric energy market in the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina is played by the London-based Energy Financing Team company. Its owner is Vuk Hamovic, a Serbian tycoon close to Boris Tadic. In late 2007 the company got the contract to build the Stanari thermoelectric power plant near Doboj, which would produce about 25 percent of the current electric power production in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The same firm is taking part in the project to construct three hydroelectric power plants in Nevesinje, Dabar and Bileca. The project is also to include a hydroelectric power plant in Capljina and Dubrovnik in Croatia. Hamovic's company took part in the construction of the Fatnicko polje tunnel, which will serve to control the flow of water from the Neretva River to the Trebesnjica River, which is vital to the supply of water to these hydroelectric power plants. The project is also important to Croatia, because its misuse could significantly reduce the flow of water to the accumulation hydroelectric power plant in Dubrovnik. Dodik recently said that he would reduce the flow of water towards Dubrovnik if Croatia backs out of the construction of a bridge over the Sava River at Bosanska Gradiska. Recently he lashed out crudely against Croatian President Stipe Mesic, which is indicative of the fact that, as absolute ruler in the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, he will not have any qualms about threatening Croatian interests, especially if encouraged to do so by Serbia.

Particularly irritating is Dodik's cynical opinion that the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina has reinstated 99 percent of the usurped property of Croats and Bosniacs forced out of their homes, knowing that these were demolished and burned-out houses, businesses, sacral buildings and felled woods. In his own mind, he has dealt with the issue of the return of displaced persons to the Serbian entity in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and has even taken to accusing Croatia of ethnic cleansing and of blocking the return of refugee Serbs. This kind of behaviour on the part of Dodik is causing increasing concern in the international community, especially as the Serbian entity has practically turned into a hotbed of crime. Dodik has of late taken to the idea of rounding it all off by creating his own personal guard, which is now suspected of abetting the protagonists of the Zagreb assassination that has unsettled the Balkan region.

Milorad Ulemek LegijaThe convicted killer of Serbian Prime Minister Dindic and a member of the so-called Zemun clan is connected to many of the members of Dodik's personal guard, and to the assassin of Ivo Pukanic, Zeljko Milovanovic