While the Police Directorate has been announcing the verification of the origin of its officers’ assets for a while now, MANS Investigative Centre came across data indicating unusual business transactions between the family of former influential police and secret service operative, Zoran Lazović, and Bemax company.
On the other hand, it was the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) that obstructed the investigation into the origin of total assets and income of Zoran Lazović and his family by refusing to make public data on the salaries of Lazović and his sons. Lazović’s older son, Marko, is employed by the Ministry of the Interior, while the younger son, Petar, works at the NSA.
Authors: Dejan Milovac & Lazar Grdinić
Squares below the market price for the godson
MANS’ investigation showed that at the end of 2018, Marko Lazović signed a contract with the company “Bemax” for the purchase of an apartment of 104 m2 in the so-called Tološki apartments in Podgorica. This company sold the property to the younger Lazović at a price of 1000 euros/m2, far below the market price not only for that part of the city, but also in relation to the building in which this apartment is located.
In addition to the more favourable price, the contract stipulates that Lazović can register this apartment in his own name after paying only 20,000 euros within 30 days, i.e. only one fifth of the purchase price. The younger Lazović has undertaken to pay the remaining 84,000 euros within three years, with no information on whether the payment is to be made in full, or in instalments that would amount to over 2,300 euros per month. The deadline for repaying the apartment to “Bemax” expired in October last year.
At the time of acquiring the apartment, Marko Lazović was 33 years old and was employed as a senior police officer in the Sector for Protection of Persons and Facilities, and soon moved to the position of junior police inspector in the Criminal Police Sector of the Police Directorate.
On this occasion, MANS Investigative Centre contacted Bemax, and Veselin Kovačević, formal owner of the company, gave the following explanation: First of all, I would like to mention that Lazović and Kovačević families are from Bijelo Polje and that it can be easily verified that they are close family friends, i.e. that I, Veselin Kovačević, am a godfather to Marko Lazović. Bearing in mind that the mentioned relations are valued and respected in our company, as well as the fact that we as a company have the right to form a price for something we own, this had an impact while forming the price and payment terms of the mentioned apartment.”
When asked whether Marko Lazović paid the remaining 84,000 euros and when, Bemax did not provide an answer.
However, that is not the only connection between the Lazović family and “Bemax”. Namely, at the beginning of last year, Lazović’s wife – Ljiljana, exchanged an apartment with Željko Garić, who has multiple business connections with the informal owners of “Bemax” and their other companies.
Ljiljana Lazović then gave her 64 m2 apartment on Jola Piletića Boulevard in exchange for an 84 m2 apartment and a garage in a building in the centre of Podgorica, behind the Hilton Hotel. The documentation on the exchange of real estate obtained by MANS shows that Ljiljana’s apartment in the area Preko Morače was estimated at 89,600 euros. On the other hand, an apartment of 84m2 and a garage in the centre of Podgorica were estimated at 100 thousand euros. In that way, Lazović got a much bigger apartment at a price that is below the market price for that part of the city, while the parking space was practically given to her.
Ljiljana Lazović has undertaken to pay the difference of around ten thousand euros immediately after conclusion of the contract, while Garić agreed to transfer the ownership of the apartment and garage to Mrs. Lazović, regardless of the fact that he did not receive the agreed difference in real estate value.
Garić has multiple ties with Bemax and its founders. Garić is the owner of the companies “Gufo” and the Women’s Basketball Club “Budućnost Bemax”, and one of the co-owners of the company “Saprom”, whose part was also Ranko Ubović. As a guest on the show “Načisto” on TV Vijesti, the official owner of “Bemax”, Veselin Kovačevic, stated that Ubović was the “informal owner” of the company.
Ranko Ubović
The company “Gufo” was one of the investors in the construction of the building known as the “South Gate of the City”, which is located on the outskirts of Podgorica, and was built by “Bemax”. The other investor in that project is “Master Inženjering”, the owner of the building in which Lazović’s wife acquired an apartment and a garage under preferential terms. “Master Inženjering” is also the investor in the construction of the facility “Hotel Cruiser” in Budva, which is also being built by “Bemax”.
Aleksandar Mijajlović, who is also connected with “Bemax”, was also in Garić’s company “Gufo”. Ubović, Mijajlović and “Bemax” are also connected by a company involved in small hydro power plants business – “Hidroenergija Montenegro”, in whose structure they were before, which MANS particularly investigated.
At the end of last year, an apartment with the garage in the very centre of Podgorica was transferred to the ownership of Snežana Lazović, daughter of Zoran Lazović. The gift agreement states that the value of the apartment and garage is now 85,000 euros.
76,000 euros for two plots
In February 2007, while he was a fixed-term employee in the former Special Anti-Terrorist Unit, Marko Lazović bought a plot of nearly 900m2 in the settlement of Zabjelo in Podgorica, at a price of 67 thousand euros. Lazović, who was 22 at the time, paid a 40,000-euro deposit before the contract was verified, and the remaining nearly 27,000 euros after the contract was verified.
Only two years later – in 2009, Marko Lazović purchased half of the road leading to the family house in Zabjelo, at a price of 9,000 euros. Marko Lazović was hired by Veselin Veljović, then in his first term of office as the Director of the Police Directorate, in the Sector for Protection of Persons and Facilities. Data on the earnings of Marko Lazović from that period are not known, bearing in mind that the Ministry of the Interior refused to submit them to MANS.
Bought a car worth 40,000 euros at the age of 19
While Marko was buying real estate, his brother Petar paid significant amounts of money to buy new cars.
The documentation shows that Petar Lazović, as a 19-year-old, paid 40 thousand euros for the “Mitcubischi Lancer Evolution 2.0” in 2009, and Mini Cooper SD ALL4 four years later, worth 35,000 euros. In that period, he also had a BMW X1 vehicle, for which the Ministry of the Interior did not provide additional information, so it is not known how much it cost.
At the end of 2018, he bought a used Golf VII for 17,500 euros. MANS does not have data since when Petar Lazović has been employed by the NSA, or on his income, although this information was officially requested from that institution, which refused to provide it justifying it with confidentiality and secrecy. He has no registered property in his name.
On the other hand, in 2009, Marko Lazović bought the first new vehicle for himself – Suzuki SX4, at a price of 16,000 euros, which he then repaid on a lease. Already in March next year, he expanded his car collection with a Golf VI, also new, which cost 24,000 euros. Marko Lazović now owns a Volkswagen Passat, for which the Ministry of the Interior claims it lost data when moving to another location, thus, it is not possible to determine how much the purchase of that vehicle cost.
30,000 from agriculture, another 67,000 saved
In his home village of Orahovica in Bijelo Polje, his father Zoran Lazović has nearly 50,000 m2 of land and several facilities. In addition to part of the property he inherited, Lazović has been buying the surrounding plots in recent years, for which he spent around 20,000 euros between 2015 and 2016.
In Podgorica, Zoran Lazović has a family house of 250m2 with an auxiliary facility, which he acquired in the 2000s. However, the data submitted to MANS by the Podgorica cadastre are not complete, and cannot answer the question of how much Lazović paid for a house with a yard at that time. When it comes to cars, Lazović uses a 2007 Toyota Hillux, and he reported a double-digit number of pistols and rifles in his property card.
In the property card for last year, Zoran Lazović reported significant savings of around 67 thousand euros, as well as annual income from agriculture of 30 thousand euros.
Turbulent career of Lazović
Zoran Lazović is a long-term senior operative of the NSA, who in recent years has also worked in the Police Directorate as Veljović’s assistant, after he was forced to retire in the secret service. During Duško Marković’s term of office in the NSA, Lazović was the head of the Department for the Fight against Organized Crime and Terrorism, while the affair over his presence at the wedding of international drug lord Safet Kalić has never been fully clarified.
Zoran Lazović, photo: Independent Daily Vijesti
At that time, in addition to Lazović and Ljubiša Mijatović, also a police operative, Ljubiša Buha “Čuma”, former leader of the “Surčin clan”, representatives of the “Zemun clan”, as well as Darko Šarić, who is still on trial in Serbia for smuggling cocaine from South America, were filmed at the wedding. Although the NSA claimed that Lazović was at the wedding ex officio, the then director of the secret police, Duško Marković, refused to share information about it with the public, saying it was an official secret.
Lazović’s name recently came into the public spotlight again after accusations that he secured the lifting of the ban on entry into Montenegro for Veljko Belivuk and Marko Miljković, who are suspected of serious criminal offenses in Serbia.
