Jocic Arrested in Pukanic Case

Published: 28 April 2009

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Sreten Jocic
Sreten Jocic
Jocić, called by media the “European king of cocaine,” was arrested Monday in the villa he was renting from the family of Slobodan Milosevic in the Dedinje neighborhood of Belgrade. The arrest were confirmed by Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić.

Sreten Jocić, aka Joca Amsterdam, has been arrested in connection with the murders of Ivo Pukanić, owner and editor of the Croatian weekly Nacional, and the magazine’s marketing manager Niko Franjić.

Police are investigating whether Jocić organized the bombing that killed Pukanić and Franjić in front of the magazine’s office in Zagreb last October.

Croatian media reported last week that police achieved a breakthrough in the case when a protected witness accused Jocić of organizing the murders.  According to the witness’s testimony, which was quoted in Nacional, Jocić hired Slobodan Đurović and Robert Matanić to carry out the killings. The two spent months planning the operation and paid co-conspirators with Jocić's money. According to unnamed police sources in Belgrade, Đurović is Jocić’s chief operative and partner. Matanić, according to Bulgarian media sources, has killed for Jocić before.

But if Belgrade authorities find enough evidences against Jocić to prosecute him, he will not be extradited to Croatia. Under Serbian law, Jocić can only be charged and prosecuted by Serbian courts for an international murder.

Jocić’s lawyer, Zdenko Tomanović, said today he does not expect his client to be extradited.

Jocić Subject of Nacional Coverage    

Robert Matanic
Robert Matanic
OCCRP has previously reported on Jocić’s history, which was also the subject of ongoing coverage in Pukanić’s Nacional.

According to various published reports and to sources, Jocić’s criminal history dates back to the mid-1980s, when he worked in Amsterdam for Ljubinko "Duja" Bećirović and was suspected of a murder in Amsterdam in 1990 done on Bećirović’s orders.

In October of that year, Bećirović died after he was wounded in an attack ordered by Klaas Bruinsma. Jocić subsequently became head of the criminal group.

Bruinsma did not live long; he was killed in June 1991 by Jocić’s friend, gang member and former police officer Martin Hoogland.
 
Then, on November 22 of that year, an attempt by police to arrest Jocić turned into a shootout that left several of the police and Jocić’s bodyguards wounded. Jocić was sent to prison on the Amsterdam murder charge but released in 1992. From there he moved to Bulgaria, a year before he was convicted in absentia of wounding a policeman in the shootout.

At that time, Bulgaria was mainly a transhipment point for stolen cars to former Soviet republics and to the Middle East, from where oil was shipped back. However, drugs soon became the major item smuggled along this route.

The Bloody Transition

Jocić and his crew became involved in drug trafficking, joining forces with other gang leaders such as Milorad Luković, aka Legija of the Zemun clan, and Pantyo “Poli” Pantev and Ilcho Bonev, aka Bay Mile, to control narcotics routes.

The gangs ruthlessly killed off competition, committing more than 60 murders in the mid-90s.  In one case, a group of Kosovo Albanians tried to move into the narcotics market in Bulgaria through connections with a security and insurance firm named VIS that, according to police, was a front for a criminal group involved in extortion and fuel and car smuggling.  In 1995, VIS’s founder Vasil Iliev was shot in his car while driving in Sofia. According to Bulgarian police sources, Jocić and Bonev allegedly ordered Iliev’s murder.

Jocić’s own business partners were not immune. Pantev, the owner of another security and insurance firm named SIK, was shot four times as he entered an elevator at the Hotel Sonesta in Aruba, allegedly on the order of Jocić, according to newspaper and police sources.

In 2002, Jocić was arrested in Bulgaria and extradited to the Netherlands.
He had been betrayed, according to various accounts, by Bonev or Legija. From prison, he arranged the killing of Bonev in a spectacularly orchestrated ruse in which men in police uniforms appeared at the sports complex Slavija, which Bonev used as his headquarters, and shot him with Kalashnikovs.

Police broke up the Zemun clan and Legija surrendered in 2004.

In the Netherlands, Jocić served time for his 1993 in absentia conviction for the murder of an Amsterdam police officer. He was released in March 2004, with the court taking into account time served in pre-trial custody. He was soon charged on suspicion of heroin trafficking, and in prison again until March 2006, when he was extradited to Serbia. He was also suspected of plotting the assassination of a Dutch prosecutor, but investigators failed to gather adequate evidence against him.
 
Recent Trial in Marjanović Murder

Jocić had been free on bail following the start of his trial in Serbia on charges he ordered the murders of Goran Marjanović, aka Goksi the Bomber, and another man. He had been released May 26, 2006, on €300,000, supposedly after a witness in the case changed his testimony. A new trial began December of last year.
During the trial, Jocić gave his address as 33 Tolstojeva street, the villa of Slobodan Milosevic, and said he is owner of  the Belgrade consulting company Hemisfera. |According to records of the Serbian Business Registering Agency, Hemisfera LLC was founded by Sreten Jocić at the end of 2006 with 500€. It has 2 employees, no income and reported a loss in 2008 of 442,000 dinars (4653€).

--Djordje Padejski, Center for Investigative Reporting in Serbia (www.cins.org.yu)