Published in Nacional number 702, 2009-04-28

Autor: Plamenko Cvitić

Serbian mob boss' victims

THE SERBIAN POLICE arrested Sreten Jocic in Belgrade Monday as the prime suspect held to have ordered the murder of Ivo Pukanic

SURPRISE ARREST Sreten Jocic did not expect to be taken into custody Monday afternoon: he felt quite safe in the Dedinje villa he had rented from the Milosevic familySURPRISE ARREST Sreten Jocic did not expect to be taken into custody Monday afternoon: he felt quite safe in the Dedinje villa he had rented from the Milosevic familySreten Jocic, the 47-year-old boss of the Balkan criminal underground, could probably not have imagined what was going to happen to him on Monday afternoon. And while for a full two decades he had the reputation of being one of the most dangerous and brutal mob bosses, even on a European scale, he has spent the past two years living the easy life in the Serbian capital, in no less than the villa once owned by Slobodan Milosevic. Even when the public learned last week that a protected witness in Croatia had accused him of organising the murder of Ivo Pukanic, Jocic was probably not overly concerned about reports he might be arrested.

Nevertheless, when a burned out jeep was found late last week on the Belgrade-Zagreb motorway containing the bodies of two members of the Serbian criminal underground, associates of Jocic's, the Serbian press quickly developed two possible theories. The first is that Jocic has of late been bumping off all those that could speak out about his criminal activities in a possible trial. The second is that it was Jocic's revenge for the murders last year of his godfathers. Whatever the case, the name of Sreten Jocic has for decades been prominent on the crime pages of the European and Balkan press, and the investigation into the murder of Ivo Pukanic has revealed his connections with this dreadful crime.


And while many crimes had been attributed to him, Jocic's name was always clearly linked to three areas: drug smuggling at the international level, cold-blooded liquidations, and links to the Serbian secret services and state apparatus. Sreten Jocic, also frequently cited in the press as "Joca Amsterdam", was born in Smederevska Palanka on 24 October 1962. He has two sisters, of which the eldest, Rajna, married a Split native in the 1980s and moved there. After completing secondary hospitality school, graduating as a waiter, in Belgrade's suburb of Grocka, Jocic served his mandatory military service in Slovenia in 1983. According to some of the Serbian press, Jocic had trouble with his superiors in the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) because of his "anti-Communism", which was corroborated by statements that he came from an "old royalist", i.e. "honest, Chetnik" family. He allegedly fled from a former JNA barracks in Slovenia in 1984 for Austria, where he lived some two years. There he got involved in criminal activities such as smuggling, extortion and theft, and was allegedly suspected by the Austrian authorities of having murdered three police officers. As a result of which he soon fled Austria for Germany.

There, in the late 1980s he got to know and started working with the big bosses of the Yugoslav crime scene – with Ljubomir Magas aka Ljubo Zemunac and Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan. It was, by all accounts, through them that he made the acquaintance of Ljubinko Duje Becirevic, a former player with the Bezanija football club of the Belgrade quarter of Novi Beograd, who fled from Germany to the Netherlands on account of his many crimes, where he quickly took over a large part of the local narcotics scene, and where there were constant power struggles between big time Dutch mobsters and the growing influence of Yugoslav criminals. Jocic first worked as Becirevic's bodyguard, and over time became his informal deputy, who, besides monitoring large shipments of heroine and cocaine, was allegedly also in charge of special assignments – the liquidation of all those who were a problem for organised Yugoslav crime gangs, and according to some sources an order for anyone's murder could be placed with Becirevic for money. In 1988 Jocic was involved in a bizarre case – he saved Croatian prostitute and porno actress Lidija Sunjerga from her pimp, by first beating him up and then giving Sunjerga the money she needed to get back to Croatia.

Sreten Jocic was first mentioned in the Dutch press in May of 1990, when, on the orders of his boss Becirevic, he shot at a criminal of Serbian origin in an Amsterdam nightclub. That same year Becirevic got into a big fight with Dutch mob boss Johannes Mieremet and Sam Klepper, who worked for the biggest Dutch mobster, Klaas Bruinsma. Becirevic had, namely, ordered from the duo, and paid in advance, a large shipment of heroine that was not delivered to him for months, because the mob duo claimed that Becirevic's drugs had been intercepted and destroyed by the Dutch police. He then asked the Dutch mobsters to return the money paid in advance, which they refused to do, and as a warning they riddled his car with bullets on one occasion.

Two days after the shooting Becirevic and Jocic met with Klaas Bruinsma, from whom they demanded a million Dutch guilder as compensation for the damages caused by Mieremet and Klepper. Bruinsma rejected them and in early October of 1990 unknown assailants once again shot Becirevic, wounding him seriously. Becirevic died three days later, on 27 October, in an Amsterdam hospital, and at that moment Sreten Jocic became the new leader of the powerful and extensive Belgrade criminal organisation in the Netherlands. Very soon Jocic, who was by then already known as "Joca Amsterdam", set out to get revenge on the Dutch mobsters, which happened several months alter. Klaas Bruinsma was killed on his orders on 27 June 1991, and his assistants Mieremet and Klepper grasped that they were next on Jocic's hit list, especially after the Serbian mobsters kidnapped one of their associates. Fully aware of how dangerous Jocic was, Mieremet and Klepper opted for an unusual move that saved their lives for a while – they sent themselves to jail, the only place they could be safe. They loaded up a car with illegal weapons, sat in it, and called the police from a pay phone, making an anonymous report that two armed criminals were hiding at a given location. The police then arrested them and they spent a year in jail, safe from Jocic's vengeance.

After the murder of Klaas Bruinsma the Dutch police began a detailed investigation of Jocic's criminal activities, and evidence was soon found concerning the liquidation at the Amsterdam nightclub. On 22 November 1991 the police came to Jocic's flat and tried to arrest him, but Jocic and his bodyguard Mile Parac shot at the police, wounding one. In May of 1992 Jocic, according to some sources, was released from Dutch prison, and according to others, escaped. In any event, he and his associate, Romanian national Ile Priescu, went to Romania where Jocic hid for a time from Western European police forces. By his own confession, that same year the then Serbian leadership, i.e. Slobodan Milosevic and Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, invited him for a meeting in Belgrade, where he was told that Serbia was under international sanctions. He was then asked to "help the homeland", i.e. to organise smuggling routes for gasoline, coffee, cigarettes and other materials, and to lobby via his contacts in eastern Balkan organised crime circles to have countries such as Romania and Bulgaria be "amenable" towards Serbian violations of the international sanctions. Besides his "patriotic" duties, say some sources, Jocic had already begun to use the smuggling channels to transport large quantities of heroine and cocaine from Turkey to Western Europe, and he was allegedly then also involved in one other line of work – organising liquidations by order. In July of 1995 Jocic got wind of rumours that a certain Goran Marjanovic had been given the contract to bump him off.

According to some, Jocic's liquidation was ordered at the time by some members of the Montenegrin mob whose turf Jocic was increasingly elbowing into, taking away lucrative jobs, while others say the hit was ordered by Dutch mobster Willem Holleder. He took over the top spot in the Dutch mob after the death of Klaas Bruinsma, not long after getting out of jail where he had been serving time for the kidnapping of Alfred Heineken, the head of the well-known beer producer. In order to thwart Marjanovic in carrying out the assassination, Jocic clearly decided to beat him to the draw. According to the indictment Jocic ordered two police officers, Bojan Milosavljevic and Nenad Dragisic, to kill Marjanovic. For the job he provided them with a car, two Heckler & Koch guns and promised them 25,000 German marks. After Milosavljevic and Dragisic shot Marjanovic in a Belgrade café on 18 July 1995, they were to have, following Jocic's instructions, thrown the weapons into the Danube River. They did not do so, however, and that mistake cost them dearly – they soon afterwards used the same weapons to extort and then shoot the owner of a café, after which they were arrested by the police. Ballistic evidence soon established that they had also used the weapons to shoot Marjanovic, and Sreten Jocic had to hightail it out of Belgrade. He found temporary refuge in Bulgaria, and since he had learned that his life was still at threat he fled Sofia in 1996 for - Columbia.

JOHN MIEREMET bought his life from Jocic, but was killed by HollederJOHN MIEREMET bought his life from Jocic, but was killed by HollederJocic did not vacation in South America, but rather established even firmer ties with the Columbian drug cartels, to which he offered his established smuggling routes – the first via Rotterdam to all of Western Europe, and the second via Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia towards Central and Eastern Europe. And so by 1997 the Dutch police had already intercepted 20 kilograms of cocaine that Jocic and a Kurd named Hussein B. were smuggling from Istanbul to Amsterdam. But, in order to continue controlling his smuggling channels and other criminal activities, Jocic had to get closer to Europe. That, however, was not easy, because there was a danger in many countries that he could be arrested on the basis of warrants from various countries, including in his two "homelands" – Serbia and the Netherlands. In Serbia the police were after him for the murder of Goran Marjanovic, and in the Netherlands for breaking out of jail, attempted murder and drug smuggling. Jocic found the closest safe haven in Bulgaria in 1999, where he purchased a large flat and began living under an assumed identity with his wife and sons. In Bulgaria he continued, although with difficulty, to run his crime and narcotics networks in Serbia and the Netherlands, and at the same time linked up with the Bulgarian organised crime scene.

According to the Bulgarian General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime, Jocic set up good connections with narcotics mobsters in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Malaysia. At the same time he did not forget his old enemies from the Netherlands – John Mieremet and Sam Klepper. Allegedly again at Jocic's orders, an unknown assailant in October of 2000 shot Klepper several times. Mieremet grasped that Jocic had not forgotten the old debt and that his life was once again in danger, and in the spring of 2001 decided to pay Jocic back his debt – by way of Willem Holleder, Jocic sought ten million German marks from Mieremet. Mieremet gave Holleder 11.5 million guilder, which he was to pass on to Jocic, but Mieremet and Jocic soon realised that Holleder had swindled them both – he took more from the first and gave less to the second.

Jocic and Holleder's biggest conflict broke out then, and some sources point out that Holleder drew on his connections to have the Dutch police and justice department continue with their criminal persecution of Jocic. His arrest in Bulgaria was also marked by controversy. Although the Bulgarian and Dutch police attribute the credit to themselves, Joca Amsterdam was allegedly snitched on by a Bulgarian narco-boss. He namely, via Jocic as a guarantor ordered two tonnes of cocaine from Columbia, but did not manage to put together the 250 million dollars needed to pay for the goods. Which was why Jocic was forced to front the money himself and, fearful of Jocic's vengeance, the Bulgarian reveal Joca's identity to the police. In cooperation with Dutch investigators, the Bulgarian police arrested Jocic on 20 June 2002 in downtown Sofia.

When he was arrested a valid Serbian secret service ID card was found on his person, which again opened various speculation into Jocic's ties with the Serbian leadership and intelligence community. While waiting for Bulgaria to extradite him to the Netherlands, Jocic was alleged to have ordered some assassinations from jail. On his hit list was the general director of the Bulgarian police, Bojko Borisov, who Jocic considered responsible for his arrest. The Bulgarian police also told their Dutch colleagues that Jocic had placed a contract out on Dutch prosecutor Koos Plooy. At the same time several mob bosses and criminals connected to drug smuggling were killed in Bulgaria, and all of these cases have been indirectly linked to Sreten Jocic.

That he was not at all happy with his time in jail and the extradition to the Netherlands, Jocic demonstrated very clearly. First he paid the biggest Bulgarian mobster, Milcho Bonev, by way of an intermediary, 3 million dollars to organise his escape from the Sofia prison, which the police soon found out about and kept Jocic at a secret location until his extradition. When that plan fell through, Jocic in the greatest earnest offered to personally pay off a part of the Bulgarian foreign debt in exchange for not being extradited to the Netherlands. But, on 17 August 2002, under heavy security, Jocic was extradited from Bulgaria to the Netherlands, which immediately detained him at Fuht, the highest security prison in the Netherlands. There Jocic was to have continued to serve his prison sentence for the wounding of a police officer, and in the meantime was sentenced to a further three years in prison for smuggling cocaine.

Even in Dutch prison Jocic did not forget his enemies and debtors, and after his departure from Bulgaria a series of liquidations ensued there. Since he felt that Milcho Bonev owed him 3 million dollars, Bonev's partner Konstantin Dimitrov was executed in 2003 as a first warning, while in January of 2004 his associate Stojil Slavov was killed in a bomb. Finally, on 30 July 2004, Milcho Bonev too was killed while, surrounded by his bodyguards, he was approached by five men wearing priest's frocks. It is of that execution, and allegedly for some others, that the Bulgarian police have for years suspected Robert Matanic and a group of Croats and Serbians. While Jocic was serving his prison sentence in the Netherlands, the investigation into the 1995 murder of Goran Marjanovic was progressing in Serbia. And while those who carried out the actual murder were sentenced to long prison terms, a witness named Zoran Dordevic emerged, fingering Jocic as the principal and providing a series of details concerning Jocic's complicity in the case. And so after serving his prison sentence in the Netherlands, that country's justice department in March of 2006 decided to extradite Jocic to Serbia, and on 23 March 2006 Jocic was, again under the tightest security, transferred to Belgrade, where a trial was opened on the Marjanovic murder.

After only two months in police detention a Belgrade judge accepted 300,000 euro bail from Sreten Jocic and he has been at large since then. Presuming what might happen to the witness, Zoran Dordevic, the Serbian justice department agreed to keep him at a secret location outside of Serbia until the trial, and some reports have it that he is in Germany or the Netherlands under the protection of the local police. Jocic in the meantime has transformed himself into an almost respectable member of society. He has taken up residence at the villa once owned by Slobodan Milosevic, started holding meetings with many Balkan entrepreneurs who were impressed to be in his company, and it is evident that he intended in Serbia to legalise a great deal of the money he had gained in two decades of illegal activity around the world. And so over the past two years he has looked into purchasing many state-owned companies entering privatisation, without anyone asking him about the origins of his funds. But the Serbian entrepreneurial lobby did succeed in getting the Serbian government to in 2007 adopt a regulation forbidding the participation in the privatisation process to people who have been convicted or are under investigation. Some of Jocic's very concrete plans to legalise a part of his activities fell through in that way, and he has focused over the last year in indirect investments. People he trusts, like Slobodan Durovic, who do not have a police record, used Jocic's money to buy up a number of Serbian companies, factories and hospitality purveyors.

Sam KlepperSam KlepperAccording to some sources Jocic planned to carry out a similar plan in Croatia, and that is perhaps where one ought to look for reasons why various "controversial entrepreneurs" from Croatia visited him over the past two years at his Dedinje villa. Although it is a taboo topic in Serbia, Sreten Jocic has not all these years withdrawn from his illegal activities. And while he is increasingly bothered by younger, new Balkan mobsters, especially those from Montenegro, he is alleged to still control a large part of the drug smuggling channels from Turkey and Bulgaria, via Serbia to Western Europe. He is alleged to have participated in human trafficking, forging money and many cases of extortion. Allegedly he did not until a few months ago give up the line of work he started back in Germany and the Netherlands – contract killings. And that is why Croatian investigators, with the help of European police forces and Interpol will soon have to determine whether the murder of Ivo Pukanic was an independent move on the part of Jocic, or ordered by someone else.

JOCIC'S SCRAPS WITH THE DUTCH

The execution of Dutch mob boss Klaas Bruinsma is attributed to Sreten Jocic, and a contract to kill prosecutor Koos Plooy. Mobster John Mieremet paid Jocic 10 million German marks to cover an alleged debt, but the go-between Willem Holleder stole part of the money. Mieremet was later killed in Thailand, but it was Holleder, not Jocic, who was behind the murder.