While the “Masters of northern Kosovo” are defended by the prime minister, they remain on the “blacklist” of the USA

The controversial businessmen from the north of Kosovo, Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic, otherwise vice president of the Serbian List, were again discussed in the Serbian Parliament. On the one hand, from Prime Minister Ana Brnabic comes the defense that these are not criminals. While the Prime Minister defends them, Veselinović and Radoičić are still on the “black list” of the United States of America because of their links to organized crime.

The godfathers and business partners of Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic were often referred to in public as the informal “masters of northern Kosovo”. Even more often, two controversial Kosovo businessmen were labeled as people involved in crime, investigative journalists confirmed it with their findings, but the defense almost always came from the top authorities.

“When you tell me the criminal group of Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic, and you show me the verdicts where they are a criminal group or do not go further, at least you, and President Aleksandar Vucic told you that and asked you, who has been here several times, do not criminalize the Serbs from Kosovo. Do not criminalize Serbs from the Serbian List,“ said Prime Minister Ana Brnabic.

Always close to people from the top of the government or the surroundings of President Vučić’s family, so the Prime Minister’s defense it is not surprising. BIRN wrote about their work on the construction of Corridor 11, illegal mining of gravel for works on Corridor 10, but also illegal construction of Veselinović in Golija, and KRIK published an important document.

“What Serbian intelligence has compiled about Zvonko Veselinović and Milan Radiocic is that they are in fact the leaders of a criminal clan in the north of Kosovo, which is also involved in smuggling oil, weapons, drugs and so on. This document was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office, which later in the meantime filed charges against them and there were several proceedings against them for economic crime, but in each of these proceedings they were acquitted,” says KRIK journalist Bojana Pavlović.

Veselinović and Radoicic are also mentioned in the indictment of the Kosovo prosecutor’s office in connection with the murder of Oliver Ivanovic, and six months ago, a friend of the murdered gang member, Veljko Belivuk, testified to circumstantial knowledge that Zvonko Veselinović was the orderer of the murder and Milan Radoičić was the organiser, and that Belivuk, on the orders of Veselinović, had paid the alleged murderer €50,000.

He was also mentioned in the context of the demolition in Savamala. The last time the accused Belivuk spoke about this was when he told the court that he had sent part of the group and part of Zvonko Veselinovic on the orders of the authorities to demolish Savamala to the ground. Serbs in both the north and the south of Kosovo are in awe of the two of them, primarily because of the amount of power they have.

“When I met a friend of mine in Belgrade a few years ago, he complained to me about a problem of a personal nature, and when I worriedly asked him, ‘so what are you going to do,’ he jokingly but truthfully replied: ” what am i going to do – to the church Živ mi Zvonko” and crossed himself”, said the editor of the KoSSev portal Tatjana Lazarević.

Last December, the US Treasury Office’s of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radioicic for links to organized crime and banned them from entering and doing business in the USA./N1