Serbian PM Ana Brnabic ducked questions about the extradition of former president Svetozar Marovic during Montenegrin PM Dritan Abazovic’s visit to Belgrade.

Serbia Again Avoids Answers About Hosting Fugitive ex-President

PMs of Montenegro and Serbia, Dritan Abazovic (L) and Ana Brnabic (R) at the press conference held during Abazovic’s visit to Serbia. Photo: BIRN.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said that her Montenegrin counterpart, Dritan Abazovic, had “again drawn her attention” to the issue of the former President of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro from 2003 to 2006 who is avoiding justice in Montenegro and hiding in Serbia, but gave no details.

“The competent authorities … of Serbia, are dealing with this question, so you will get an answer soon,” Brnabic told a joint press conference in Belgrade.

At today’s start of Abazovic’s two-day visit to Serbia, according to their statements, he and Brnabic agreed on numerous economic and energy issues.

But the issue of Svetozar Marovic remains unsolved. Abazovic told the media he expected it to be solved but “cannot put pressure”.

Marovic, once a close associate to Montenegro’s President, Milo Djukanovic, has hidden from justice in Serbia since 2016, avoiding a three-years-and-nine-months jail sentence for corruption.

In August 2021 Abazovic, then Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister, called on Serbia to extradite the fugitive ex-president, pointing out that his jail sentence expires under the statute of limitations in 2026, meaning he would be free in five years.

Part of his sentence, a one-year jail sentence awarded as a substitute for an unpaid million-euros fine, has already expired.

He was arrested in Montenegro in 2015 over a string of corruption charges linked to his hometown of Budva and, after signing a plea deal, was sentenced in September 2016 to three years and nine months in prison. He was also fined just over a million euros.

His son, Milos, also pleaded guilty to involvement in an illegal land sale in a village near Budva that prosecutors said cost the municipality 1.4 million euros. He was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to repay 380,000 euros. Both men fled the country and have reportedly lived since then untouched in Serbia.

Montenegro in 2019 formally sought Marovic’s extradition from Serbia. In December 2020, after BIRN published an investigation saying that Milos Marovic had built up agricultural land holdings in Serbia worth more than a million euros, the new government in Montenegro said it had renewed its request for their extradition.

Serbia’s Justice Ministry has several times rejected BIRN’s request for information on the progress of Montenegro’s extradition request, saying its laws oblige it to “maintain confidentiality” on the case.

Under Serbian law on international legal assistance in criminal matters, when the Justice Ministry receives an extradition request, it forwards it to the relevant courts.

But the Higher Court in Belgrade told BIRN in December 2020 that no request for the extradition of Marovic had been received.

Despite the arrest warrant, Serbian police have never detained Marovic. After Montenegro’s Justice Ministry sent a request for his extradition in April 2019, in December that year, the Ministry told BIRN that it had received no official answer from Serbia on the request.

After Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia left the old six-republic Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s, Serbia and Montenegro created a new loose “State Union” of the two republics, which lasted until 2006, when Montenegro proclaimed its independence.

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