Montenegro’s Special Prosecutor’s Office announced today that Sander Stanaj, owner of the company Rokšped Auto Centar and currently unavailable to Montenegrin authorities, along with former National Security Agency official Duško Golubović, are suspected of causing Montenegro damages amounting to at least €18.2 million.
Collected evidence raises reasonable suspicion that the defendants and other unidentified individuals are part of an organized criminal organization, the Prosecutor’s Office stated.
According to the announcement, they secured an illegal profit of €18.2 million for the criminal organization, to the detriment of Montenegro, by failing to pay customs duties, excises, and taxes for at least 23,580 packages of smuggled cigarettes during 2020 and 2021.
Their alleged goal was to bring duty-free cigarettes from the free customs zone of the Port of Bar and sell them in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.
As part of an action against cigarette smuggling, Montenegro’s special police raided the villa complex of the Stanaj family in the Stari Aerodrom neighborhood of Podgorica a day earlier. The Stanaj family owns the company Rokšped.
Rokšped is described as one of several business empires in Montenegro. Since 1992, it has been registered for the import and export of cigarettes and is the sole authorized importer of a large number of well-known cigarette brands in Montenegro. Previously, the company also traded in oil and its derivatives but sold this business to the Russian company Lukoil for €26.5 million. The company now also engages in press distribution.
