Bloody Dynasty

There are at least 10 convincing reasons why someone would want to shoot Goran Vukovic (36) from the Vozdovac neighborhood of Belgrade, boss of the strongest and most dangerous group of criminals in Belgrade. Unidentified assassins sprayed him with automatic weapons fire (probably Heckler Und Koch submachine guns) while he was starting his white BMW 850 in central Belgrade last Monday. Since it's not customary for killers to turn themselves in and explain why they killed someone, blew up a car, threw explosives into a cafe, it would be an illusion to expect the police to find out who fired over 30 bullets at Vukovic and also killed Dusko Malovic who was in the BMW's back seat. The motives for the killing inside Belgrade's growing underworld with little experience and brains (we're the strongest, so no one can touch us) remain hypothetical.

Still, everything about the killing points to the conclusion that this is part of a fight for territory where dealers working for Belgrade's organized crime groups are selling hard drugs (cocaine and heroin). Belgrade's mob bosses are adamant that the killing of Goran Vukovic was directly linked to his firm stands and refusal to negotiate a division of spheres of interest in drug dealing. "It's an open secret that Goran Vukovic had a deal with a certain T., the best known dealer in Belgrade and long-time police informer who had a bomb planted in his home once," informed sources said.

Vozdovac residents say many owners of cafes, restaurants, boutiques and shops will breathe more easily after this killing since Vukovic was one of the worst racketeers, although he denied that claim and said he was a businessman. People who worked with him say he couldn't resist the challenge and started trafficking drugs and taking over territory which was far from his native Vozdovac; all of the territory that his mobile hard-core team could grab and hold. They seem to have overlooked some vital details; many underworld figures, criminals that the press wrote about, have been trafficking drugs for a long time and doing their best not to allow their names to be published. Those people aren't the least bit naive. Some of them have been charged with several spectacular murders with obvious police support. Some were released and others had their sentences cut short, which is unimaginable. For years we heard nothing about them. And now some dangerous (to them) new kids are surfacing, headed by an experienced Goran Vukovic. They're endangering their quiet lives and trying to take over their market. "With no hesitation at all, they took out the leader (Vukovic) and seriously rattled the Vozdovac team which will need a long time to recover if ever," informed sources said.

Vukovic is known to have occasionally been a soldier in the Bosnian Serb Republic (RS) during frequent visits to the front. He offered support to the Serbs in Bosnia when morale was low. "He brought food, ammunition, brought his people in and fought sometimes. Everything was unofficial, no contract. He also did some deals for the RS in Belgrade," Vukovic's friends say.

His friend Dusko Malovic was killed with him. Malovic was a member of the RS police special forces. Many compared Vukovic to Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan, but there was never any love lost between the two. They are similar in some ways: both men's fathers were intelligence officers in the Yugoslav army, both were accused of crimes and tried to portray themselves as notorious patriots.

Many believe Vukovic was killed to prevent him from taking revenge for the shooting aboard the Lukas restaurant boat, on the morning of 27 November when Bojan Banovic (19) was killed. Banovic was Vukovic's soldier. Vozdovac gang member Miodrag Balaskovic (28) was seriously wounded in the shooting. The shooter was Goran Mrdeljic (31), a former police officer who was seriously wounded and who was later allegedly transferred from a hospital in Belgrade to his grandmother in Leskovac.

Allegedly, the shooting was over a car. Mrdeljic allegedly sold his car to Banovic, claiming it had been stolen abroad (a customs crime) which means the whole deal is harmless. But the car had been stolen in Yugoslavia, which could cause complications for Banovic because the law says the buyer committed the crime of concealment and could face a prison sentence. Mrdeljic grew rich in the space of just three years. His property includes the "Boemi" cafe (former National theater club). He's also known as the most successful stolen car dealer in Belgrade.

Vukovic and his soldiers Zoran Dimitrov and Miodrag Baskalovic challenged the police openly in a November 25 interview for the Novi Sad weekly Svet saying they were fighting for democracy and praying for "another March 9 (demonstrations in 1991 to topple the regime), not to fight politically but with the police", but it's very unlikely that the police quickly organized the assassination of Vukovic. Not because they wouldn't like to see him dead, but because even the stupidest police officer knows the killing could be done without direct police involvement. Many were ready, if the police turned a blind eye, to eliminate Vukovic. The rumors that spread about him being the most cautious and always alert criminal who is impossible to surprise is just plain stupidity. That was proved true the night he was killed, when his assassin walked up to him, emptied his magazine and got into a taxi and left. Someone who knows he's being targeted, and Vukovic knew, would never get into his car without looking around first. It's a well-known fact that it's hard to stay alive today if someone has decided to kill you. You can avoid death for a while, like Vukovic did several times, but the final outcome is certain. Your defence mechanisms drop, Belgrade lawyer Branko Popovic says, and that's always fatal.

The most unbelievable version is that Vukovic was killed by friends of Ljuba Zemunac who Vukovic killed in Frankfurt years ago. He spent five years in a German jail and was deported to Yugoslavia in mid-1991.

Bear in mind that two of the big crime bosses, the only ones who lived to be 50 and wield huge influence in Belgrade, forgave the Zemunac killing even though one of them was his good friend. Also, in Belgrade's underworld nothing happens just like that. Amid the seeming chaos there is order. A lot of kids who have taken the dangerous path of crime usually don't see that. Maybe they comprehend that suddenly, but it's usually too late and unimportant.