SQUARING OF ACCOUNTS "CHICAGO STYLE"

AIM Zagreb, 16 July, 1997

In January this year, in the part of Zagreb called Dubrava - the suburban residence of the rich people from Janjevo - from a racing BMW, Ivan Mirko Krpelnik, the notorious smuggler of stolen cars, was shot in broad daylight. The witness of the assassination was Ivan Sakota, a man from the same "branch", but of lower calibre. Young Krpelnik (24), who was shot through the neck artery, was driven to hospital by Sakota. But it was too late for help: Krpelnik who had become a "celebrity" for having stolen the car of the Croatian minister of the economy Davor Stern, died soon after. He had committed about 80 crimes during his lifetime.

The name of his friend and colleague of the same age, Ivan Sakota, would have been soon forgotten, if he had not met with the same destiny on 28 June. He was killed in front of a coffee shop called Kvak, with a precise sniper shot. Sakota, called "Greasy", wore a bullet-proof vest, so his murderer, who had obviously known his habit, shot Sakota in the unprotected part of the body. That is how Sakota made it to the front pages of Croatian newspapers.

Just a week later, on Friday, 3 July - it was three o'clock in the morning - Shpejtin Taci was killed with an automatic-gun burst. The murder of Taci was also committed in the Chicago style: while he was waiting at a traffic light in his green BMW, an unknown motorcyclist stopped beside him, took out an automatic gun and with about ten bullets shot Taci in the head and body. He died in hospital. Shpejtin Taci was a participant in the war, former member of special units trained in Nis, who had volunteered in the Frankopan brigade of the Croatian army, also with a thickish police record. Between these two events, downtown Zagreb, in number 38 Ilica street, a jeans shop was blown up, but since it happened in the middle of the night, there were no victims.

This is a new thing in Zagreb. Explosions downtown and gun fights behind which dead mobsters remain in the streets have become part of everyday life in the Croatian capital. Sights resemble those happening in Belgrade, which the Croatian public could until now see only in the film called "See you in the Obituary" which was about two years ago presented by Croatian Television. This is the only Serbian film spectators of HTV had the opportunity to see in the past seven years. Reasons for broadcasting it were quite obvious: citizens of Zagreb and Croatia were shown how, contrary to Belgraders, they lived in peace and enjoyed complete safety. Since then, things have changed to such an extent that the film "See You in the Obituary" can be watched in Zagreb, but live.

After Taci's murder, all investigators in Zagreb police were alerted, some were even awakened in the middle of the night. Additional patrols were sent into the streets, control points were set at exits from the city and all suspicious points, but there were no results. All these cases were preceded by an expension of violence in the past few months; in February this year, the owner of the entrprise WGW, Srecko Vargek, who had quickly become rich in the business, was beaten up with baseball bats. Allegedly, he had refused to pay racket. In April, the goldsmith's Alen Franjo's shop in Teslina street downtown Zagreb, was set on fire, and a couple of days later, Alen Franja himself, the owner of a coffee factory and a chain of goldsmith's shops, was brutally beaten up while his red Ferrari was demolished. All these events - and there had been many more - procured until recently peaceful Zagreb the epithet the "metropolis of fear". The latest case, murder of taxi-driver Ivan Kovacic, whose body was found on Sljeme, shows that this epithet is neither unjustified nor arbitrary any more. Zagreb underground is boiling and it is difficult to believe that the chain of murders and shootings will soon end although the real background of these conflicts is not quite clear at the moment.

Everything that has been found out about these cases to this day indicates that it is not just the "mob" in the background of them, but that it is a complex network of relations in which a significant part is played by high politics, the military and the police, and that the killed criminals are just the last and probably the least significant link in the chain. The Croatian state was created in the war chaos in which many recognized a chance of a lifetime to become rich easily and quickly. Since Croatia had neither an army nor armament, from the very beginning of the war - clearly at the initiative of the state leadership - armament was smuggled in, and numerous individuals collected high commission fees along the way. Slavko Degoricija has publicly on several ocassions described the flow of this smuggling. General Martin Spegelj also spoke about this topic. Money for arms was procured from various sources, mostly from Croatian emigrants, but it seems that in this operation illegal narcotics trade, as well as control of prostitution and other forms of crime played a role that cannot be ignored. In his book called "Criminal Tale", Italian mafioso Felice Maniero, accused even Tudjman's son, Stjepan Tudjman, for participation in illegal arms trade together with the Italian mafia, which he of course denied. However, accusations did not arrive solely from Italy.

In an open letter sent on 2 July to president of the Republic, Dr Franjo Tudjman, former president of Croatian Youth and (also former) member of the ruling HDZ, 23-year old Domagoj Margetic, quite unambiguously pointed out to firm connections of the state authorities with organized crime, especially with the illegal car trade. "State security services and two ministries cover up for perpetrators of organized stealing of cars", wrote Margetic, "... so they all make quite nice sums of money in this business. A few cars that have been found are best evidence of this, which ministries or heads of intelligence services were searching for and which belonged to the officials or men close to them. And they found them. But, when it comes to ordinary citizens, they must pay the blackmailing price which is somewhere between five and ten thousand German marks, in order to get their cars back. I have recently informed Mrs. Pasalic and Gugic with such a case, because the stolen car concerned was connected to the people from the Ministry of defence".

A little later, in an interview to Tjednik, Margetic declared that Dr Ivic Pasalic, Tudjman's advisor for internal policy who is believed by many to belong to the so-called very influential "Herzegovina lobby", could find every stolen car within a few days. What could Tudjman's advisor have in common with finding stolen cars, Margetic wondered. Certain policemen in the interior of Croatia also claim that illegal import of cars - specifically in Pakrac - is going on with the knowledge of the ministry of the interior. From Austria and Germany, cars more than seven years old (pursuant the law, imported cars should not be older) are imported into Croatia, and then, with the knowledge of the police, they are registered as "cars found on the territory liberated after operation Flash". This "business" is probably going on in other regions too. The biggest trading centre of stolen cars is western Herzegovina, the territory where no laws are valid and which is controlled by the official Zagreb.

Margetic also claims that illegal narcotics trade is linked to the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Internal Affairs, too. He finds evidence for this in continuous concealing of the number of addicts, and in differences between the figure given by the police and those reported by certain other services. Secretary General of Interpol, Razmond Kendall, recently asked Croatian minister Ivan Penic how many persons had been arrested by Croatian policemen after they had confiscated 150 kilos of high-quality cocaine in Rijeka. The Minister answered that the investigation was still under way and that it would be known who was caught only after it had been completed. Immediately after that, in a container sent from Guadaquvilla, Croatian police confiscated a new shipment which contained an even larger quantity of cocaine: 350 kilos. Even after that nobody was arrested. The question "why" remained without an answer, which is even more surprising if we believe the officials of the Ministry of the interior who usually brag about high efficiency.

Margetic says that prostitution has "remained under concealed protection of the state, the law, the judiciary and the police". Since young Margetic is a politician of conservative convictions, he says that his activities aimed at fighting prostitution, drug addiction and other vices annoyed personages from the top echelons of power, so he was often summoned for interrogation and some of his actions were prevented, others banned, and he himself forced to leave the HDZ. Firm evidence for these allegations were not revealed by Margetic, but he claims that it exists and that it was stored in a safe place. He did not add that he had no intention of taking his own life, but it probably goes without saying.

What is the police doing about it? Not even after Margetic's letter which de facto accuses the very top of the state of organized crime, did it open an investigation although it would have been only natural to expect someting of the sort. When the jeans shop exploded in Ilica street in the middle of the night, the Ministry of the interior issued a statement according to which the reason for the sabotage had probably been the recent discharge of the manager! Had it really been true that this was the result of squaring of accounts because of a misunderstanding among the employees in the jeans shop, it should be said that methods of resolving problems among until recently ordinary, peaceful working people, had indeed acquired unusual proportions. Neighbours who live in the vicinity of the shop, testified to the police that - just before the explosion - a big black limousine had stopped in front of the shop with loud screeching of tyres, and then after it had equally spectacularly left, the explosion sounded.

The only victim of it all is the head of the Organized Crime Department in Zagreb police, Perica Martinovic, who is known among his colleagues as an excellent field worker and supreme professional. Shpejtim Taci, Ivan Mirko Krpelnik and Ivan Sakota regularly visited his office, charges were brought up against them on several occasions, but they have never ended in a trial. Connoisseurs of Zagreb underground claim that all these murders are directly linked to the shady business of stealing and illegal import of cars, and Martinovic - who has formally been promoted, was in fact removed, so he would not be in somebody's way too much.

The allegation is not unfounded either that these assassinations actually removed men who were in the way to the real "bosses" of Croatian underground who are obviously sufficiently influential to be able to order such things and prevent their clarification. The police, if it wishes, can break even through the firmest "omerta" (law of silence). Except if it were not part of it. The most curious of all is that minister Penic claims that in Zagreb there is no "mafia" but only "three or four organized groups with different criminal interests". If that were true, then their activity is truly impressive.

BORIS RASETA

(AIM)