{"id":34092,"date":"2022-08-09T13:16:34","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T11:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/?p=34092"},"modified":"2022-08-09T13:16:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T11:16:34","slug":"cins-reveals-who-is-working-for-mines-trader-from-greece-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/cins-reveals-who-is-working-for-mines-trader-from-greece-plane-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"CINS Reveals: Who is Working for Mines Trader from Greece Plane Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Mladen Bogdanovi\u0107<\/strong> took ownership of the company Valir<\/em> in 2020, he could not have imagined that about two years later he would become the focus of media attention. In mid-July this year, a plane carrying mortars from Kru\u0161ik<\/em>, which his company was selling, crashed in Greece and became the news of the day.<\/p>

The ownership structure prior to Bogdanovi\u0107 pointed to ties with Slobodan Te\u0161i\u0107<\/strong>, an arms dealer who has been under United Nations<\/em> sanctions, and since 2017 by the United States of America. Information uncovered by CINS reveals new links.<\/p>

Working at Valir<\/em> is Vera Dikovi\u0107<\/strong>, the daughter-in-law of former Chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, Ljubi\u0161a Dikovi\u0107<\/strong>, and she submitted documents to the Serbian Business Registers Agency<\/em> this year on behalf of the company. Vera is married to Dikovi\u0107’s son Nemanja, who until recently was second secretary at the Embassy of Serbia<\/em> in Greece, and is currently employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs<\/em>.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

This Ministry<\/em> normally participates in the process of issuing permits for the import, export, transport and transit of weapons and military equipment, i.e. the arms trade. The Ministry<\/em> did not tell us what position the younger Dikovi\u0107 holds today.<\/p>

When CINS\u2019s journalist called the company’s phone number, she was told that Vera “has gone to the Ministry to get something”. We managed to get in touch with Vera, but she did not want to talk to us.<\/p>

We also asked her husband, Nemanja Dikovi\u0107, for a comment, but he told us to seek approval from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs<\/em>.<\/p>

Nemanja’s father, Ljubi\u0161a Dikovi\u0107<\/strong>, was appointed Chief of General Staff<\/em> in 2011, and retired in 2018. Back in 2015, Blic reported on how his entire family was working in government services \u2013 his wife in the army, his daughter in the Civil Aviation Directorate<\/em>, and Nemanja in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs<\/em>.<\/p>

In a conversation with CINS\u2019s journalist, Dikovi\u0107 did not want to answer questions seriously. This did not change even after we called him a second time.<\/p>

During the 1990s, Dikovi\u0107 was the commander of the 16th Border Battalion of the Yugoslav People\u2019s Army<\/em>, which, according to the Humanitarian Law Center<\/em>, was stationed on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>

CINS can also reveal that the owner of Valir<\/em>, Mladen Bogdanovi\u0107, is the son of Luka Bogdanovi\u0107<\/strong>, who in the 1990s was the Head of the Bratunac Public Security Station and Head of the police department of the Zvornik Public Security Center. He retired in 2012 as Deputy Chief of the police station in Bratunac. That year, he was also mentioned in the media as the president of the nearby local community of Je\u017ee\u0161tica.<\/p>

Luka Bogdanovi\u0107 was a witness before the court in Bosnia and Herzegovina in various war crimes cases. Radovan Karad\u017ei\u0107<\/strong> proposed him as one of the researchers for his defense team. However, the secretariat of the Hague Tribunal<\/em> rejected this request because of the role and position he had during the war, i.e. during the period which Karad\u017ei\u0107 was on trial for at that time.<\/p>

We were unable to reach Bogdanovi\u0107 at the phone number that was submitted to the Hague Tribunal<\/em>, and which that he still uses, as far as CINS journalists were informed.<\/p>

His son Mladen has not answered our calls or responded to an e-mail that the company told us he would receive on his phone.<\/p>

In addition, documents for this company were also submitted by Sanja Kapetina<\/strong>. The media wrote that she is the daughter of Dragan Kapetina<\/strong>, who was Head of the State Directorate for the Transfer of Weapons and Military Equipment in the Republika Srpska. The captain was also a director in several companies owned by Slobodan Te\u0161i\u0107, according to previous reports by Bosnia\u2019s \u017durnal<\/em>.<\/p>

Sanja Kapetina also did not want to talk about her participation in this business.<\/p>

All of Valir’s licenses<\/h2>

In 2021, Valir generated income of just under 56 million EUR (over 6.5 billion RSD).<\/p>

According to data that CINS received from the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications<\/em>, between January 2020 and July 21, 2022, 29 licenses for the export of weapons and military equipment were issued to this company.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

The end users were the defense ministries of Azerbaijan, Mali, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Also, licenses were issued for the export of ammunition to the United States of America for sale on the commercial market.<\/p>

In its response, the Ministry<\/em> states that in most of the 29 licenses, the export was fully or partially realized, apart from eight cases (of which four licenses expired).<\/p>

Also, Valir’s<\/em> financial report shows that in 2021, the company Krupnik<\/em>, which is mentioned in the Kru\u0161ik<\/em> affair, gave this company a loan of over 200 million RSD.

Valir as an intermediary<\/h2>

The <\/span>Nova.rs<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/span><\/a> portals reported that Valir<\/i> was only an intermediary in the trade of mines from the plane shot down in Greece, i.e. that the weapons were being transported for the Bosnian company BA-Metalexort<\/i>. when asked by journalists why they did not do business directly with Kru\u0161ik, the director of this company Alen \u0110uzel<\/b> explained that this could not be done.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The Ministry of Defense<\/i> of Bangladesh is our customer. We could not buy directly from the factory, because they have their own brokers. Valir was a broker, they offered us what we needed,\" \u0110uzel told BIRN.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

According to the findings of the State Audit Institution<\/em> (DRI), Kru\u0161ik<\/em> sold weapons through commission agents \u2013 the companies GIM, Jugoimport<\/em> SDPR and Krupnik<\/em>. CINS already spoke with whistleblower Aleksandar Obradovi\u0107<\/strong><\/a> about what brought about the Kru\u0161ik<\/em> affair.<\/p>

Zenitprom<\/em> also gave a loan to Valir<\/em> in 2021. This company was exporting weapons to Myanmar in 2020 and early 2021, ahead of the coup that led to civil war, according to an investigation<\/a> carried out by CINS, BIRN, the Myanmar organization Myanmar Witness<\/em> and the Dutch organization Lighthouse<\/em>.<\/p>

Thank you for reposting CINS articles! When doing so, you need to state that you have taken the story over from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia, and provide a link to the article you are reposting.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

More information at: cins.rs\/en\/terms-of-use<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since the plane crash in Greece, the public has been wondering about who is employed at the Valir company that was selling mines from Kru\u0161ik. CINS can now reveal who the people at this company are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1119,"featured_media":34102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1492,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigative-stories","category-news","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Crash-site-in-Greece-Screenshot-Reuters.png","author_additional":[1348],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34092"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34110,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34092\/revisions\/34110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}