{"id":9056,"date":"2022-04-15T07:55:25","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T05:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mans.co.me\/en\/?p=9056"},"modified":"2022-04-18T09:50:24","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T07:50:24","slug":"close-family-friends-and-or-trading-in-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/?p=9056","title":{"rendered":"Close family friends and\/or trading in influence?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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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 Lazovi\u0107, 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 Lazovi\u0107 and his family by refusing to make public data on the salaries of Lazovi\u0107 and his sons. Lazovi\u0107’s older son, Marko, is employed by the Ministry of the Interior, while the younger son, Petar, works at the NSA.

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Authors: Dejan Milovac & Lazar Grdini\u0107<\/strong><\/p>\n


Squares below the market price for the godson <\/strong><\/p>\n

MANS\u2019 investigation showed that at the end of 2018, Marko Lazovi\u0107 signed a contract with the company “Bemax” for the purchase of an apartment of 104 m2 <\/sup>in the so-called Tolo\u0161ki apartments in Podgorica. This company sold the property to the younger Lazovi\u0107 at a price of 1000 euros\/m2<\/sup>, 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.<\/p>\n

In addition to the more favourable price, the contract stipulates that Lazovi\u0107 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 Lazovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Tolosi1.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

At the time of acquiring the apartment, Marko Lazovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

On this occasion, MANS Investigative Centre contacted Bemax, and Veselin Kova\u010devi\u0107, formal owner of the company, gave the following explanation: First of all, I would like to mention that Lazovi\u0107 and Kova\u010devi\u0107 families are from Bijelo Polje and that it can be easily verified that they are close family friends, i.e. that I, Veselin Kova\u010devi\u0107, am a godfather to Marko Lazovi\u0107. 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.”<\/p>\n

When asked whether Marko Lazovi\u0107 paid the remaining 84,000 euros and when, Bemax did not provide an answer.<\/p>\n

However, that is not the only connection between the Lazovi\u0107 family and “Bemax”. Namely, at the beginning of last year, Lazovi\u0107’s wife – Ljiljana, exchanged an apartment with \u017deljko Gari\u0107, who has multiple business connections with the informal owners of “Bemax” and their other companies.<\/p>\n

Ljiljana Lazovi\u0107 then gave her 64 m2<\/sup> apartment on Jola Pileti\u0107a Boulevard in exchange for an 84 m2<\/sup> 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 Mora\u010de was estimated at 89,600 euros. On the other hand, an apartment of 84m2<\/sup> and a garage in the centre of Podgorica were estimated at 100 thousand euros. In that way, Lazovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Razmjena.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Ljiljana Lazovi\u0107 has undertaken to pay the difference of around ten thousand euros immediately after conclusion of the contract, while Gari\u0107 agreed to transfer the ownership of the apartment and garage to Mrs. Lazovi\u0107, regardless of the fact that he did not receive the agreed difference in real estate value.<\/p>\n

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Gari\u0107 has multiple ties with Bemax and its founders. Gari\u0107 is the owner of the companies “Gufo” and the Women’s Basketball Club “Budu\u0107nost Bemax”, and one of the co-owners of the company “Saprom”, whose part was also Ranko Ubovi\u0107. As a guest on the show “Na\u010disto” on TV Vijesti, the official owner of “Bemax”, Veselin Kova\u010devic, stated that Ubovi\u0107 was the “informal owner” of the company.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Ranko Ubovi\u0107<\/p><\/div>\n

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 In\u017eenjering”, the owner of the building in which Lazovi\u0107’s wife acquired an apartment and a garage under preferential terms. “Master In\u017eenjering” is also the investor in the construction of the facility “Hotel Cruiser” in Budva, which is also being built by “Bemax”.<\/p>\n

Aleksandar Mijajlovi\u0107, who is also connected with “Bemax”, was also in Gari\u0107’s company “Gufo”. Ubovi\u0107, Mijajlovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

At the end of last year, an apartment with the garage in the very centre of Podgorica was transferred to the ownership of Sne\u017eana Lazovi\u0107, daughter of Zoran Lazovi\u0107. The gift agreement states that the value of the apartment and garage is now 85,000 euros.<\/p>\n

76,000 euros for two plots<\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 2007, while he was a fixed-term employee in the former Special Anti-Terrorist Unit, Marko Lazovi\u0107 bought a plot of nearly 900m2 <\/sup>in the settlement of Zabjelo in Podgorica, at a price of 67 thousand euros. Lazovi\u0107, 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.<\/p>\n

Only two years later – in 2009, Marko Lazovi\u0107 purchased half of the road leading to the family house in Zabjelo, at a price of 9,000 euros. Marko Lazovi\u0107 was hired by Veselin Veljovi\u0107, 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 Lazovi\u0107 from that period are not known, bearing in mind that the Ministry of the Interior refused to submit them to MANS.<\/p>\n

Bought a car worth 40,000 euros at the age of 19<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Marko was buying real estate, his brother Petar paid significant amounts of money to buy new cars.<\/p>\n

The documentation shows that Petar Lazovi\u0107, 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.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2018, he bought a used Golf VII for 17,500 euros. MANS does not have data since when Petar Lazovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, in 2009, Marko Lazovi\u0107 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 Lazovi\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

30,000 from agriculture, another 67,000 saved<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his home village of Orahovica in Bijelo Polje, his father Zoran Lazovi\u0107 has nearly 50,000 m2<\/sup> of land and several facilities. In addition to part of the property he inherited, Lazovi\u0107 has been buying the surrounding plots in recent years, for which he spent around 20,000 euros between 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n

In Podgorica, Zoran Lazovi\u0107 has a family house of 250m2<\/sup> 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 Lazovi\u0107 paid for a house with a yard at that time. When it comes to cars, Lazovi\u0107 uses a 2007 Toyota Hillux, and he reported a double-digit number of pistols and rifles in his property card.<\/p>\n

In the property card for last year, Zoran Lazovi\u0107 reported significant savings of around 67 thousand euros, as well as annual income from agriculture of 30 thousand euros.<\/p>\n

Turbulent career of Lazovi\u0107<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zoran Lazovi\u0107 is a long-term senior operative of the NSA, who in recent years has also worked in the Police Directorate as Veljovi\u0107’s assistant, after he was forced to retire in the secret service. During Du\u0161ko Markovi\u0107’s term of office in the NSA, Lazovi\u0107 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 Kali\u0107 has never been fully clarified.<\/p>\n

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Zoran Lazovi\u0107, photo: Independent Daily Vijesti<\/p><\/div>\n

At that time, in addition to Lazovi\u0107 and Ljubi\u0161a Mijatovi\u0107, also a police operative, Ljubi\u0161a Buha “\u010cuma”, former leader of the “Sur\u010din clan”, representatives of the “Zemun clan”, as well as Darko \u0160ari\u0107, who is still on trial in Serbia for smuggling cocaine from South America, were filmed at the wedding. Although the NSA claimed that Lazovi\u0107 was at the wedding ex officio, the then director of the secret police, Du\u0161ko Markovi\u0107, refused to share information about it with the public, saying it was an official secret.<\/p>\n

Lazovi\u0107’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 Miljkovi\u0107, who are suspected of serious criminal offenses in Serbia.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Lazovi\u0107, and Bemax company. On the other hand, it was the Ministry of<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[368,365,364,361,367,356,360,359,366,20,369,363,370,357,358,295],"class_list":{"0":"post-9056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-investigative-stories","8":"tag-gufo","9":"tag-master-inzenjering","10":"tag-mitcubischi-lancer-evolution-2-0","11":"tag-nacisto","12":"tag-south-gate-of-the-city","13":"tag-bemax-company","14":"tag-hilton-hotel","15":"tag-ljiljana-lazovic","16":"tag-ranko-ubovic","17":"tag-safet-kalic","18":"tag-saprom","19":"tag-snezana-lazovic","20":"tag-veljko-belivuk","21":"tag-veselin-kovacevic","22":"tag-zeljko-garic","23":"tag-zoran-lazovic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mans.co.me\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}