Mr. Chief's Operations

“Even before he was appointed chief of the Serbian DB in 1998, Radomir Markovic had engaged people in that Service to watch over Jovica Stanisic and his close associates”, says Dragisa Ristivojevic for VREME, who was once Jovica Stanisic’s deputy, the then acting chief of the State Security of Serbia. However, they were all insufficiently qualified for that job and without any standing amongst their colleagues: Milan Radonjic, Zoran Magnotic, Branko Crni, Radisa Roskic… The minute he was appointed DB chief, he named Nikola Curcic his deputy, the former city secretary of the Secretariat of Interior Affairs (SUP), whom Badza had also appointed director of the Institute of Security. Otherwise, Nikola is highly inclined towards commerce so he fitted in nicely with Markovic. Actually, the two of them had been a team for a long time before that; Nikola had Slobodan Milosevic’s trust since Nikola’s brother Veljko Curcic (our recently replaced ambassador in Slovakia) was his dear friend. After taking over the Service Rade, following commands of the married couple from Dedinje, broke up the Service and sacked all those who were any good. He named Crni as his assistant, in charge of operational tasks (until then he had been head of a department for counterintelligence protection of federal and republican bodies), Roskovic as deputy head of the counterintelligence department, Franko Simatovic Frenki remained assistant to the chief of the service. Ristivojevic says that they were all people who knew practically nothing about the Service. Especially Radonjic. He is, to put it mildly, a very strange man. He put black ceramic tiles on all the walls and the floors of a huge apartment in Senjak which Rade gave him last year and the apartment he previously had was also completely decked out in black. Otherwise, Rade is a passionate and excellent hunter. When Marko Milosevic was a boy, Rade taught him how to shoot and was in charge of taking him with him. Rade and Dusan Stupar, the former cabinet head of the former police minister Viobran Stanojevic took Marko hunting, they loved and protected each other. Rade was very close to Mira Markovic, closer than to her husband.  

VILLAS AND YACHTS: Since rivalry existed between Radovan Stojicic Badza and Rade, when Badza’s option won and when he became Zoran Sokolovic’s deputy, he immediately replaced Rade as head of the City SUP and transferred him to the republican MUP. It is an undisputed fact that Mira Markovic appointed Rade as Serbia’s DB chief, even though he had no previous experience. However, he was very extreme in the political sense. He was all in favor of using force against the demonstrators in 1996. "They should be dispersed with sticks and beaten up”, said Rade but the entire DB was against that particular method of dispersing the demonstrators. At that time, he was an assistant to the minister in the republic MUP, in charge of computer data. Last year in September, prior to the elections, Rade, as head of Serbia’s DB, forced all the top officers of the Service to join either JUL or SPS. That could have been expected since Rade Markovic, at the first DB staff meeting, pointed out to everyone that the first and basic task of the Service is to protect the president of the republic, and not national security. “To simplify matters, he introduced a concept which totally degraded the Service”, says Ristivojevic. “I would truly love to have a yacht, it wouldn’t even have to be a super luxurious one…”, wrote Rade Markovic, answering an article entitled The Lead Takes us to Senjak, published in our weekly on December 7 of last year. 

“Rade Markovic truly does have a luxurious yacht complete with radar, which we were assured of at the Sava marina close to the shipbuilding yard. The yacht was completed a few months ago and everyone knows that it belongs to Rade Markovic”, says Ristivojevic. In the same text, Rade Markovic explains that he still hasn’t moved into the villa built by the “means of his wife and others acquired by the sale of his parent’s and his own apartment”. When Markovic commenced his police career, he used to brag that he has an apartment, i.e. half of a house, vertically split. However, in 1999 the government of Serbia gave ten million dinars in order to resolve his housing issue. That money was transferred to the Institute of Security, whose director was Rade’s best friend Nikola Curcic, who finally retired last December, explains Ristivojevic. With those funds (333.333 DM) the aforementioned villa was built. Otherwise, even police ministers Radmilo Bogdanovic and Radovan Stojicic Badza were unable to make Nikola Curcic retire. He used to tear up the decision about his retirement with the comment: “So you’re the ones who are going to make me retire, you f…… bastards” As any decision on his retirement came up, Slobodan Milosevic would annul it. After Oct. 5, he could no longer tear the decisions.

While on the subject of villas, the generals’ mania that they are entitled to them due to their “merits for the people” was then, and still is, going strong. That’s how the general in Serbia’s MUP Vlastimir Djordjevic Rodja received a huge credit from banker Ljuba Mihajlovic and built an enormous house on Avala. However, he moved into a villa in Dedinje which the government gave him instead. The one on Avala is uninhabited. Otherwise, Rade Markovic wanted to remove Rodja from public security for a long time, but he was protected by Nikola Sainovic, Milosevic’s inseparable associate and follower, who always accompanied him to the villa on Black Peak. The wife of police general Obrad Stevanovic refused a huge apartment because the “terrace is awkwardly positioned and is large and she can’t sweep snow off it in winter”.

INHERITANCE: The majority of Belgrade’s citizens don’t know that one of the bases of the Special Operations Units (JSO, a part of DB) is located next to the Sava river in New Belgrade with two machine gun nests encircled with barbed wire like the concentration camps of Mauthausen and Dachau. That location was previously given them by City Hall. Rade Markovic inherited that base from the previous State Security top officers. It never was clear what JSO’s special forces-divers were doing on the river. How are they supposed to protect the country and fight terrorists while diving in Sava. Their place is in Kosovo, at the border, reason former DB members. The JSO commander Milorad Ulemek, who has now taken his wife’s last name Lukovic, visited the base only twice, he wasn’t interested in either the river nor the base, but Rade Markovic often sailed there on a fast boat, owned by DB. The head of the divers was Zoran something or other, they often practiced in black diver’s suits and scared the people who came to the river. It is more than probable that in the pre-election period Rade Markovic used the JSO men for dirty business. Otherwise, the truck full of sand from the Ibarska highway was owned by the Special Operations Unit. Rade was devoted to Mira Markovic and did all that she suggested. When he was appointed head of DB, he brought some police colonel from Novi Sad and placed him to be Ulemek’s deputy with the idea of ousting Legion in future, but things weren’t functioning there and Ulemek remained JSO commander until a few days ago. Rade Markovic, as he said, has “as far as property connected to water is concerned, a raft on Sava next to Ostruznica”. He always arrived either with his family or alone with a heavy escort of policemen whose task was to check the raft, clean it of potential mines (which never happened) and enable him a safe respite. One morning last summer a certain retired policeman named Martin called the city SUP and informed them: “Last night a few rafts were broken into, maybe the General’s as well.” In record ten-minutes time, seven police jeeps arrived and a few dozen policemen. Two police combat boats sailed down the river as well to eventually intercept the thieve’s escape route via the river. And who says our police isn’t efficient: in half an hour they found the thieves – two minors and a certain Miroslav Nikolic. They took all of their clothes off and made them take to the thorny bushes and subjected them to a good beating afterwards, all in order to impress the great boss. These days an investigation is being conducted against Miroslav Nikolic in the Second Municipal Court. The case is filed under Ki 1609/2000. Otherwise, the little house on Rade Markovic’s raft wasn’t broken into nor was anything stolen from it. Of the other 33 broken into houses in two nights – that wasn’t the case.