Post by terroreign on Jun 4, 2010 19:15:52 GMT -5
www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/05/montenegrin_murder
FRITZ is dead. He was relaxing yesterday morning in the Café Moka in the historic old town of Kotor on the Montenegrin coast when Ivan Vracar allegedly pulled a pistol on him and killed him. Mr Vracar then fled through the town gates before being caught and beaten to within an inch of his life by Fritz’s bodyguards. The murder, in front of horrified tourists, is a serious blow for the tiny Balkan state.
Fritz, or “Fric”, as it is written here, was the nickname of Dragan Dudic, a key figure in a story The Economist published three weeks ago. He was a close associate of Darko Saric, a man now on the run and who is accused of being the kingpin of a major drug smuggling gang. The connection is that Mr Dudic, the owner of the Maximus disco, amongst other enterprises, was being investigated in connection with money laundering.
The story first appeared in Monitor, a Montenegrin magazine, which unearthed some extraordinary documents in a serious bit of investigative journalism. Late last year a police operation called Balkan Warrior netted 2.7 tonnes of cocaine, most of it on the Maui, a yacht moored in Uruguay. Probably this was just the tip of what is alleged to be Saric’s iceberg. What is crucial, though, is that Monitor uncovered the existence of a network of companies set up by associates of Mr Saric in Delaware and in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
Four of them, in the Marshall Islands, were owned by Mr Dudic or his student son. They were called Secondo Porto Shipping, Monteflowery, Maximus Shipping and Flipside Trading. They provided collateral which passed through the Bank of Cyprus and then to the Austrian state-owned bank Hypo Alpe Adria in Podgorica for loans mainly to one company owned by another associate of Mr Saric.
Last month Hypo-Alpe Adria told The Economist that it was not money laundering and that all these transactions had been reported to Montenegro’s anti-money laundering agency. After the article was published Igor Luksic, Montenegro’s deputy premier, wrote to The Economist, describing the article's suggestion that the Saric case had hit the country’s reputation as “way off the mark”.
The murder of Mr Dudic is tragic in many ways. First, as a potential key witness he has now been silenced, although his death may actually be a revenge killing for something unrelated. Second, as elderly tourists and packs of Russian tour operators being shown the beauties of this country potter along the coast, murders such as this won’t help boost revenues in a country that has been badly hit by the recession.
Mr Dudic’s death, laments Milka Tadic, the Monitor journalist who broke the original story, says “all too much about the way Montenegro works. He was not just a partner of Mr Saric but also involved in business with Kotor’s municipal authorities. What sort of a country have we got in which you can be both the partner of a drug dealer and elected authorities?”
Fritz, or “Fric”, as it is written here, was the nickname of Dragan Dudic, a key figure in a story The Economist published three weeks ago. He was a close associate of Darko Saric, a man now on the run and who is accused of being the kingpin of a major drug smuggling gang. The connection is that Mr Dudic, the owner of the Maximus disco, amongst other enterprises, was being investigated in connection with money laundering.
The story first appeared in Monitor, a Montenegrin magazine, which unearthed some extraordinary documents in a serious bit of investigative journalism. Late last year a police operation called Balkan Warrior netted 2.7 tonnes of cocaine, most of it on the Maui, a yacht moored in Uruguay. Probably this was just the tip of what is alleged to be Saric’s iceberg. What is crucial, though, is that Monitor uncovered the existence of a network of companies set up by associates of Mr Saric in Delaware and in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
Four of them, in the Marshall Islands, were owned by Mr Dudic or his student son. They were called Secondo Porto Shipping, Monteflowery, Maximus Shipping and Flipside Trading. They provided collateral which passed through the Bank of Cyprus and then to the Austrian state-owned bank Hypo Alpe Adria in Podgorica for loans mainly to one company owned by another associate of Mr Saric.
Last month Hypo-Alpe Adria told The Economist that it was not money laundering and that all these transactions had been reported to Montenegro’s anti-money laundering agency. After the article was published Igor Luksic, Montenegro’s deputy premier, wrote to The Economist, describing the article's suggestion that the Saric case had hit the country’s reputation as “way off the mark”.
The murder of Mr Dudic is tragic in many ways. First, as a potential key witness he has now been silenced, although his death may actually be a revenge killing for something unrelated. Second, as elderly tourists and packs of Russian tour operators being shown the beauties of this country potter along the coast, murders such as this won’t help boost revenues in a country that has been badly hit by the recession.
Mr Dudic’s death, laments Milka Tadic, the Monitor journalist who broke the original story, says “all too much about the way Montenegro works. He was not just a partner of Mr Saric but also involved in business with Kotor’s municipal authorities. What sort of a country have we got in which you can be both the partner of a drug dealer and elected authorities?”