Darko Saric’s Gang Members Admit Guilt

Published: 27 April 2012

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Two members of Darko Saric’s drug trafficking group have pled guilty as part of a plea bargain with Serbian prosecutors, Blic news reported Thursday. Serbian nationals Mirko Miodragovic and his son Aleksandar admitted to smuggling cocaine for Saric in Brazil. 

Mirko Miodragovic was charged with smuggling 1.1 tons of cocaine for Saric in 2008, and for being a member of an organized crime group.

He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after the Special Court for Organized Crime in Belgrade confirmed his guilt admission agreement on Wednesday. In addition to the prison sentence, the authorities seized €70,000 (US$92,600) of his assets that were illegally obtained, a source at the Prosecutor’s Office told Blic news.

Aleksandar Miodragovic has admitted to bringing €250,000 (US$330,700) to Brazil to buy cocaine for Saric. Saric’s group sent the drugs to Europe via transatlantic cargo ships.

In addition, to the father and son pair and Saric, the indictment covers eight other defendants. Among them is Nikola Dimitrijevic, the alleged leader of the Brazilian portion of Saric’s gang. He is charged with procuring the cocaine, renting apartments and storage facilities where the cocaine was stored and purchasing vehicles to transport the drugs.

The authorities are no closer to catching Saric, and unsubstantiated claims about his location provide little help in the hunt for this Montenegrin drug lord.

Six other members of Saric’s group entered guilty pleas in March.

In March 2008, the Brazilian police seized 1.23 tons of cocaine in a storage facility in Sao Paolo. They determined that the cocaine belonged to drug dealers from the Netherlands, who purchased 1.1 tons from Saric’s group. The police obtained the information from smugglers who provided the remaining 130 kilograms found in the storage.