Although Serbia’s state leadership, led by President Aleksandar Vučić and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić, frequently promotes a media narrative of “cleaning up our own ranks” and zero tolerance for anyone who “stains the badge,” operational reality within the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) tells a different story. Deep, systemic connections persist between high-ranking police chiefs and organized crime syndicates.
The Internal Control Sector (SUK) prosecuted more than 200 police officers during 2025—marking the highest volume since the oversight body was established in 2006. However, the revelation that 20 percent of those prosecuted held senior leadership positions, combined with a total lack of transparency regarding the judicial outcomes of these cases, indicates that police investigations remain selective, politically controlled, and primarily designed to manage public fallout rather than enact institutional reform.
The “Senjak” Case: A Police Chief Implicated in Body Disposal
The most severe tremor to shake the security sector occurred on May 15, 2026, with the arrest of Veselin Milić, the recent chief of the Belgrade Police Directorate and a former national security advisor to President Vučić.
[Chronology of the "Senjak" Scandal (May 2026)]
May 12: Shooting at a restaurant in Senjak ──> Disappearance of criminal Aleksandar Nešović.
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May 15: Belgrade Police Chief Veselin Milić and three of his bodyguards are arrested.
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Late May: Nešović's body is found buried in a barrel 50km from Belgrade; Milić's apartment raided.
Milić, a highly decorated police official, stands accused of a severe criminal offense—assisting an offender after the fact to cover up a murder. The investigation by the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade centers on a brutal underworld incident in the affluent Belgrade neighborhood of Senjak, where an organized crime figure named Aleksandar Nešović vanished following a restaurant shooting.
Days later, Nešović’s body was discovered stuffed inside a plastic barrel buried fifty kilometers outside the capital. Simultaneously, three active-duty police officers serving as Milić’s personal bodyguards were taken into custody. By late May, forensic units executed search warrants on Milić’s private residence and official offices, while a spin-off raid netted two additional Belgrade officers accused of unlawfully bypassing background checks to supply firearms to criminals in Milić’s inner circle.
Dijana Hrkalović and the Collapse of the Special Court
The case against former MUP State Secretary Dijana Hrkalović, the right-hand operative of former Interior Minister Nebojša Stefanović, has become the definitive symbol of political interference within the Serbian judiciary. Following a grueling three-year trial and an initial 16-month prison sentence for trading in influence, the Court of Appeals annulled the verdict in December 2025, ordering the entire trial to restart from scratch in March 2026.
Hrkalović is accused of directly obstructing homicide investigations against Veljka Belivuk, the leader of a notoriously brutal organized crime syndicate, by ordering her subordinates to permanently withhold critical forensic extraction logs from Belivuk’s mobile phones from prosecutors.
[The Network of Police Assurances to Crime Clans]
Dijana Hrkalović (Former MUP State Secretary)
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Dejan Milenković Milorad Šušnjić
(Former Head of Special (Former Novi Sad Police Chief)
Investigation Methods) Sentenced to 4 years in prison
Accused of erasing/manipulating for running a fake surveillance
surveillance footage of key operation to shield international
gangland assassinations. fugitive Darko Elez.
Entangled in the same corrupt network is Goran Papić, the former deputy chief of the Service for Combating Organized Crime (SBPOK). Papić has already been sentenced to two years in prison for bypassing standard operating procedures to return a seized armored car to Marko Miljković (Belivuk’s chief enforcer), alongside an additional one-year house arrest sentence for the brutal torture of a Belgrade restaurant owner.
Jovanjica: A “Drug Factory” Under the Shield of Intelligence Agencies
The “Jovanjica” affair—which erupted in November 2019 when police uncovered an organic food farm near Belgrade concealing a massive illicit cannabis laboratory and 1.6 tons of marijuana—remains without a final, binding judicial resolution. The case directly implicates sections of the state security apparatus in state-sponsored narcotics trafficking, as the indictment features not only police officers but active field operatives from the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) and the Military Intelligence Agency (VOA).
“Jovanjica was not an ordinary farm; it was a drug factory backed entirely by the state security services,” testified Milan Isakov, one of the anti-narcotics inspectors who originally raided the plantation.
[The Jovanjica Saga: Honors vs. Retaliation]
Inspectors Who Exposed the Plantation Reaction of the Security Apparatus
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐ ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ • Slobodan Milenković (4th Department) │ │ • Summarily reassigned/demoted (2023) │
│ • Dušan Mitić (Lead Inspector) │ ──> │ • Placed under permanent bodyguards │
│ • Milan Isakov (Raiding Inspector) │ │ • Isakov hit with retaliatory charges │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘ └────────────────────────────────────────┘
Instead of receiving national honors, the head of the Belgrade Police 4th Narcotics Department, Slobodan Milenković, and his colleague Dušan Mitić, were summarily stripped of their command positions in 2023. Following credible intelligence assessments revealing credible state-linked assassination plots against them, these whistleblowing inspectors are forced to live under 24/7 armed police protection.
Meanwhile, inspector Milan Isakov faces a trial of his own on abuse-of-office charges, an indictment he has publicly condemned as a blatant act of state intimidation.
The Minister and the Cartels: From “Miša Banana” to Darko Šarić
Current Interior Minister Ivica Dačić remains continually haunted by his own documented history with transnational drug lords. In 2015, the investigative journalism network KRIK leaked wiretapped video surveillance and photographs capturing Dačić holding private meetings with Rodoljub Radulović (known in the criminal underworld as “Miša Banana”). Radulović was a high-ranking lieutenant in Darko Šarić’s global drug cartel, later sentenced to 11 years in prison for smuggling industrial quantities of cocaine from Latin America to Western Europe.
The secret meetings occurred between 2008 and 2009, precisely while Dačić was serving his first term as Interior Minister. Dačić defended himself by claiming that Radulović had not been flagged in MUP’s active criminal databases at the time and that his own intelligence agencies failed to brief him on the target’s background.
The structural infiltration of the police by Darko Šarić (who is serving a 14-year sentence for smuggling 5.7 tons of cocaine) has been thoroughly mapped in court. In April 2025, Šarić was sentenced to an additional six years for plotting the murder and public character assassination of state witnesses from his prison cell. Convicted alongside him were three active MUP officers who accepted bribes to manipulate active police databases and feed confidential operational data directly to Šarić’s defense network.
Brutality and Custodial Death Cover-Ups
Beyond structural corruption, Serbia’s law enforcement infrastructure faces chilling accusations of systemic police brutality and human rights violations:
- Promotion Over Suspension: Senior police official Marko Kričak became the center of public outrage following anti-government protests in August 2025. University student Nikolina Sinđelić, backed by mass street protests under the banner “We Are All Nikolina,” accused Kričak of excessive force and threatening her with rape during her detention. MUP leadership summarily dismissed the allegations. Just four months later, in December 2025, Kričak was promoted to Chief of the Criminal Police Directorate (UKP).
- Death in Custody: For over two years, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Niš has maintained total silence regarding the death of a detainee inside the Bor police station. The victim, the brother of a suspect in the high-profile murder of two-year-old Danka Ilić, died within hours of his arrest in April 2024. MUP initially issued an official statement attributing the death to “natural causes.” However, after an autopsy report was leaked to the weekly magazine Radar proving the detainee died from a fatal beating while shackled, the case was transferred to Niš, where it remains buried under a blanket of institutional secrecy.
