Serbia Sentences Convicted Drugs Baron Saric for Money Laundering
In a first-instance verdict that can be appealed, a Serbian
court on Friday sentenced a convicted drugs smuggler, Darko Saric, to nine
years in prison for laundering at least 20 million euros in the country.
According to the indictment, in 2009 Saric and 18 others
began buying up companies, land and real estate in Serbia, mainly in
agriculture and tourism in the northern province of Vojvodina.
Saric tasked associates, some of them lawyers, with finding
different people to make deposits into bank accounts of up to 15,000 euros –
the limit under which the authorities or the bank would not check the origin.
That money would then be used to buy up companies, land and real estate in
Serbia.
Saric’s co-accused did not deny making the purchases but
said the purpose was not to launder money.
The trial began in 2011 but only really drew attention after
Saric surrendered to the authorities in 2014. Saric said he had earned millions
from the sale of the Serbian newsstand network Stampa to German Westdeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung, WAZ, and had entrusted the proceeds to a friend.
The Serbian state disagreed and seized his property in
Serbia – flats, company shares and hotels. The authorities recently made four
hotels available to people returning from abroad pending COVID-19 tests, and to
accommodate health workers.
Saric, 50, who was born in Montenegro when it was part of
federal Yugoslavia but has Serbian citizenship, has been in custody since his
surrender in 2014.
In 2018 Saric was sentenced to 15 years of prison time for
smuggling some 5.7 tonnes of cocaine from South America. A second-instance
verdict, in this case, is pending.
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