Marko Milosevic's Six Passports

In the period from 1990 to year 2000, six diplomatic passports were issued to Marko Milosevic, son to the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  The first issued passport was lost and declared invalid, while the last one was returned, but only after a regular passport was issued to Milosevic in Moscow, at his own request.  Because this information was officially confirmed, the whole matter has been taken under consideration last week at the Prosecutor’s Office of the Second Municipal Court, while the public was left wondering how is it possible for someone to hold six passports and what is the purpose of so many documents issued to the same individual.  Besides the dilemma whether kinship with a high official is sufficient basis for issuing a diplomatic passport which is considered a privilege of office in other countries, the public is also left wondering how many sons, sons-in-law, nephews, nieces, daughters-in-law and various cousins enjoy similar privileges.

ARTICLE 5:  The issuing of diplomatic and government passports is subject to the Federal Government Regulation announced in the Government Annals of the FRY from July 11, 1997 – according to this regulation, the right to a diplomatic passport is reserved for high state officials (from the presidents and prime ministers of the FRY, of Serbia and of Montenegro, through to federal and republican prosecutors, to the governor of the National Bank, the Chief of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army, to the presidents of all three parliamentary bodies and presidents of constitutional and supreme courts).  Where “a specific mission is pursued abroad,” a diplomatic passport is issued to members of the federal and republican parliaments, to federal officials, to generals and admirals of the Yugoslav Army, to ministers in the republican governments, to presidents of chambers of commerce and of academies of arts and science, as well as to republican commissaries for refugees.  The right to a government passport is reserved for employees of Yugoslav embassies abroad, for citizens who accompany a state delegation or are traveling abroad “on official government business.”  There is no mention of family members of state officials anywhere in the law.

Despite this, the fact that Marko Milosevic’s many passports all have an entry “son of the FRY President” in the place of an official diplomatic title will probably not present too much of a legal problem.  Namely, Article 5 of the Regulation of the Issue of Diplomatic and Official Passports includes a point that “at the request of a government official” these passports can be issued to prominent individuals in public life, as well as “to an individual who is traveling abroad with the objective of carrying out a specific mission” – the key point is that the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs is personally in charge of this issue.  According to Rajko Kolarov, Director of the Directorate for Consular Affairs in the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this Article “permits very broad interpretation, which can be acted upon by the Federal Minister.”  Former Yugoslav Foreign Affairs Minister, Zivadin Jovanovic therefore had a legal right to interpret Article 5 very broadly and to request issue of diplomatic passports for everyone he considered to be “traveling abroad with the objective of carrying out a specific mission,” and it is only natural that this could very well have included Marko Milosevic.

CONTENTIOUS NUMBER:  Still problematic is the fact that a total of six diplomatic passports were issued to Milosevic, of which he presently holds four.  In this instance, broad interpretations of the law are of little help: “A citizen of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia can have two passports, but of a different order – a diplomatic passport and a regular passport.  Everything else is against the law,” VREME was told by Rako Kolarov.  The Second Court Prosecutor’s Office will investigate who issued multiple passports to the same individual, although it is logical that this was carried out by smaller officials and that the federal minister had little say in this.

The one question to which there is no answer, even a hypothetical one, is what is the purpose of having six identical passports, especially if it is taken into account that a Yugoslav passport still bars entry to the majority of countries.  Namely, while in the past it was possible to enter many countries with a regular passport and without a visa, in the nineties even diplomatic passports required a visa.  Both “ordinary” and privileged citizens of Yugoslavia can travel without a visa to only twenty countries of the world: Ecuador, Greece, Pakistan, Croatia and Italy, while Egypt does not require visas only in diplomatic passports (this does not include official passports!).  China, Korea, Mongolia and countries of the former USSR (excluding Estonia, Lithonia, Lithuania and Uzbekistan) permit entry without a visa for diplomatic, official and regular passport carriers, with an indication “on business” (which is determined by the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs), and only for a period of 90 days.

Besides this, at the time that when the new Yugoslav Government enjoys the good opinion of the international community, it is hardly likely that any country will be willing to offer hospitality to the son of the former president.  As VREME found out, his request for a visa was recently denied by an Asian country in which the Milosevic Family used to be very popular.  Therefore, diplomatic passports do not give Marko Milosevic much room for maneuver, which makes it all the more surprising that he wanted to have more than one.  Given the fact that they were issued at a time when the demise of the former regime was well entrenched (without need for feeling by its representatives), it seems that this was merely a way of showing off with something that is not the privilege of mere mortals.

Upon arriving to Moscow in October of last year, Milosevic Junior did actually decide to return one of his diplomatic passports, and in its stead our embassy issued a regular passport in his name.  According to Kolarov, the law has also been broken in this instance – an embassy has the right to issue a passport to an individual who has been residing in the place of the consular office for at least three months, which was not the case in this instance.  It is assumed that the people most responsible for this are the diplomatic representatives in Moscow, above all the former Ambassador, Marko’s Uncle, Borislav Milosevic.

In any case, Marko Milosevic has (“unfortunately” as we were told) a theoretical possibility of using all four passports which he owns.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a request to Moscow for appropriating all of his passports which he presents, although this still only has the form of a diplomatic communiqué.  It should not be forgotten that besides his diplomatic passports, Milosevic also holds one regular passport issued in his name, while nothing is known about another regular passport he holds in the name of Jovanovic and which was supposedly issued to him while he was still in Yugoslavia.  With a little know-how, all this creates ample opportunity for him to change his identity and to wholly eschew all those who would like to see him come back to Yugoslavia.

PRIVILEGED:  However, as usually happens, the offspring of the Milosevic Family are not the only privileged ones.  According to the information offered by the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the present time there are several thousand diplomatic and official passports, which considerably exceeds the number of state officials (both present and past) or “personalities from public life.”  The only explanation for this is absence of selection, that is to say a broad interpretation of the law.  In this case, the people responsible for this, besides the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, are the former heads of the Ministry – the law clearly stipulates that the general secretary issues a passport to diplomats who reside in a country for four years (with the prior consent of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs), while persons who are not employees of the Ministry get their passports issues by the general secretary and the ministry.

The only consoling fact in the entire story of the no-one-knows-how-and-why issued diplomatic passports is that these passports are valid, but not usable: “The condition for exiting the country with a diplomatic or an official passport is an exit visa which is issued for a limited period of time, most often for several months.  A person who has a passport but does not have an exit visa cannot do anything with that passport,” Rako Kolarov states.  Despite this, the possibility remains that there are those who managed to leave the country while their exit visas were still valid.  Just as the possibility remains that visa extensions were perhaps approved for certain individuals in the fairly chaotic, post-revolutionary period.

The majority of these passports should be returned: “The law clearly states that individuals who get passports are required to return them upon the completion of their missions abroad.  In the event that they travel abroad again, new passports are issued or old ones are extended, but they must be submitted to the ministry.  Why do people not return them, even though they know that they cannot do anything with them does not make any sense to me,” Borivoje Zurovac, Deputy Chief of the Sector for Consular Affairs with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained for VREME.  Noting that “many people retain diplomatic and official passports only to be able to brag about it”, Foreign Affairs Ministry officials told VREME that federal and republican governments requested that they do everything in order for those passports to be returned as soon as possible.  For now, of the more notable representatives of the old regime, the only ones who returned their diplomatic passports are a small few: the vice-president of federal government, Jovan Zebic and Vladan Kutlesic, and the former Minister for Refugees, Bratislava Buba Morina.

PRIVILEGES:  What in fact does a diplomatic passport offer, besides entry to a small number of countries?  Not much.  Whoever has such a passport is not freed from excise duties while exiting Yugoslavia, while “they are treated with due care abroad, although this does not assume being spared control, should there exist any need for it.”  Only diplomats enjoy absolute immunity on the territories of foreign countries, although they are marginally spared legal accountability, and only for minor offences – in cases of more serious offences, they are prosecuted in their countries of origin.  All together, there is still an element of privilege associated with diplomatic and official passports.

Even though Yugoslavia is a signatory of the Vienna Convention which regulates consular and diplomatic relations between countries, carriers of diplomatic and official passports were denied certain privileges in the past decade – Rajko Kolarov notes that they often waited longer than others at border crossings because of various delays.  If one takes into account that among the thousands of holders of diplomatic passports there are a few who are also on the list of indictments by the Hague Tribunal, than this behavior on the part of officials of other countries is only understandable, especially since there was no official cooperation with those institutions.  Given that formal cooperation with Interpol is expected soon, it will probably no longer be possible to ignore indictments (even theoretically, as was the case up to now), where the issue of a diplomatic passport is requested.

Official policy in this sense takes as its starting point the desire to renew cooperation with the rest of the world: Borivoje Zurovac states that “the Federal Ministry is trying to re-establish mutual issuing of diplomatic and official visas and to reactivate previously signed agreements.”  Before this (if for no other reason, than at least because of credibility of the new government), it will be necessary to identify those responsible for the issuing of six diplomatic passports to a single individual, to prevent the leaving of the country by those who have such passports, to force the return of those passports, and to establish how and why…  Of course, the problem of Article 5 still remains – the word is that many officials in the new government have begun requesting the same privileges that the previous regime enjoyed, privileges that they could certainly enjoy within “the broad interpretation of the law.”  However much the world is willing to accept us with sympathy at the present moment, it is unlikely that an official of any serious country will not regard with some suspicion any diplomatic or official passport issued here, even if the name of its carrier is Goran Svilanovic.