Croatia’s Bureau for the Prevention of Corruption and Organized Crime, USKOK, has filed an indictment against eight Croatian citizens for smuggling hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and selling weapons.
The principal defendant, Petar Cosic, 52, is also accused of the murder of Milan Milovac, 47, who collaborated with the Belgrade drug lord Darko Saric.
The prosecutor’s office said that it brought the indictment after an investigation in which evidence was obtained in cooperation with the authorities of France, Serbia, Austria, Spain, Ecuador, Italy, Greece, Germany, and with the involvement of Eurojust, the Croatian embassy in Chile and Interpol.
BIRN has learned the eights are: Petar Cosic “Sarac”, from Tomislavgrad, Manuel Vulic, Ante Vrcan, Marko Carevic from Porec, Dragan Kricka, Oliver Cokara, Andjelko Orsulic, Luka Jerkovic, Vjekoslav Junkovic and Goran Vuk.
According to USKOK, Cosic, from November 2019 to April 12, 2022, in Croatia, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Greece, Bosnia, Colombia and Ecuador, connected Vulic, Carevic, Kricka, Cokara and Orsulic and several other persons, among whom was the late Milovac, in the joint action.
According to USKOK, Cosic was in charge of designing the plan to smuggle cocaine from South America to Europe and gave the instructions to other members of the group.
Milovac was in Ecuador and was in charge of direct contacts with drug suppliers.
Manuel Vulic, according to USKOK, was in charge of organizing and financing the loading of cocaine into ships and supervising the transport route of the containers.
Carevic coordinated actions and persons on the ground, as well as paying the participants, collecting the drugs extracted from the container in Ploce and ensuring their further transport to Zagreb and distribution in Croatia.
Kricka also handled the drugs’ extraction from the containers in Ploce and arranged their further transport to Zagreb, while Cokara had the task of locating, observing and organizing the extraction of the cocaine containers after arriving at the port of Ploce.
Orsulic, according to USKOK, was in charge of positioning the container after it was unloaded in Ploce at a place where there is no video surveillance and where it is possible to access it, and if need be, store it until it is transported to Zagreb.
The eight-member group smuggled at least 609 kilograms of cocaine, which they resold for a value of more than 16.4 million euros, USKOK said.
Milan Milovac, aka “Cigla” [The brick], in the meantime, died in Ecuador as a result of an assassination organized by Cosic.
It is further suspected that Cosic and, according to USKOK, an unknown person (likely the arrested Serbian drug lord Saric) from February 2020 until January 12, 2021, decided to liquidate Milovac.
After Saric ended up under house arrest in Serbia, where he is being retried for smuggling 5.7 tons of cocaine and money laundering, Milovac allegedly wanted to take over the main role in the chain and replace his former boss, Saric, in the field.
Saric was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Serbia for smuggling while on the run, and after he surrendered, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict, and he ended up under house arrest, with a monitoring bracelet on his leg.
Cosic charged Vulic for the murder of Milovac. In Ecuador, he reportedly hired unknown persons for Milovac’s liquidation. USKOK added that Milovac’s liquidation was attempted on November 13, 2020, in Guayaquil, but he survived and was taken to the hospital with serious injuries.
After being informed that Milovac was only wounded, Cosic then offered the assassins additional money for the murder of Milovac, and two Colombians were hired. However, the second assassination attempt did not take place because in the meantime one of the assassins was arrested, while Milovac died from his earlier injuries.
According to the media, Milovac was the right-hand man of Saric, who was arrested in Belgrade last April.
USKOK also suspects Vulic and Goran Vuk of smuggling and reselling 38 automatic rifles, 119 grenades, 2.4 kilograms of plastic explosives, five pistols, one rifle, ammunition and detonators from BiH to France, and on that occasion, the group under his leadership earned at least 164,500 euros.
Cokara and Orsulic were arrested in March of last year, while, together with Goran Bebic, they were removing bags of cocaine from a container of bananas.
Cokara and Orsulic settled at the Split County Court, and the former was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for unauthorized production and trafficking of drugs as part of a criminal association. He was also fined a million and a half HRK (200,000 euros), which he has paid. Orsulic was given five years and four months in prison and has already paid the state 400,000 kune (53,000 euros).
“Cocaine consumption is constantly increasing and more and more people are seeking help because problems with cocaine, it has become a lifestyle,” Milan Jukic, head of the therapy community of the NEovisnost (NOT an addiction) Association, told BIRN.
He urged a deeper investigation into why the seizure of large quantities of drugs appears periodically. “Whatever is done, new routes will be opened,” Jukic told BIRN.
Source : BI
