The drug mafia application can also reveal judges and prosecutors - informants
Will the Minister of the Interior Panče Toškovski succeed in what his predecessor - Oliver Spasovski - started before he left office: to reveal the "moles" among the policemen, judges and prosecutors who cooperated with the drug mafia and break up the criminal group from Grcec ? A new moment in the fight against the drug mafia is the help that the Ministry of the Interior has from the decoded messages of the "Sky" application used by the criminal group "Dukanjik" from the village of Grcec, headed by Shevalj Muaremi.
According to Toshkovski, there is a huge amount of evidence obtained from the "Sky" application, so there will be many interesting cases for the public in the future.
- I assume that there will be a greater number of cases that are related to the evidentiary material provided by the sky application, which is given to us by our international partners. We are talking about a huge amount of evidence related to specific crimes - said Toškovski, after two former police officers and one member of the criminal group ended up in custody.
These announcements by Toškovski are on the same line as the former Minister of Internal Affairs Oliver Spasovski, who before leaving office revealed that police officers, judges and prosecutors collaborated with the criminal group from Grcec.
- He is involved in many institutions - the Ministry of the Interior, other agencies, ministries, courts, public prosecutor's offices. Maybe you will be surprised in the coming period, but once it has to come out who are those who at a certain moment shouted "hold the thief", and in essence they were - announced Spasovski.
For now, only the retired police officers who broke through the operation "Mountain" led by the Prosecutor's Office back in 2021 have fallen into the network of informants, and two prosecutors have been collecting evidence for almost a year since the head of the Prosecutor's Office for prosecuting organized crime and corruption was prosecutor Vilma Ruskovska. She announced even then that the action was broken in Grcec. There, searches were made at 26 locations, but the drugs were removed, and only 800 grams of cocaine were found. Only the sellers were caught, but not the drug lords.
They underwent an operation that lasted a year
-According to the special investigative measures, which are being completed today, and which refer to these six persons who are being sought, we have information that the action in the village of Grcec has been breached and it has been announced that it will be investigated whether everything fell into the water with the help of police employees . Where we had knowledge that there were drugs, it was cleared. Here, in three locations, around 100 grams of cocaine were found. Regardless of the amount, the Prosecutor's Office has solid evidence for all persons for whom an order to conduct an investigative procedure has been issued. We knew from the beginning that we would not be able to find a large amount of drugs. Only three vehicles were seized, two from Grcec and one from Gazi Baba. With the fact that the most luxurious vehicles owned by the leaders of Grcec were hidden, which means that somewhere only keys were found, somewhere not even that - declared Ruskovska.
Several more police actions followed to break up the Grcec criminal group, but only after three years were two retired chief inspectors accused of property crimes, i.e. illegal drug trade. In fact, Muaremi "bought" investigators Eyup A. with money. and Darko G. which collected information about the procedures that were conducted against the criminal group, but also security and intelligence activities of the state authorities. So, together with Oliver P. are suspected of having committed the criminal offense of criminal association and continued criminal offense of divulging an official secret in the period from December 2019 to March 2021, in addition the first and third suspects also committed the criminal offense of obstruction of justice, and the first suspect is also charged with the criminal offense of illegal acquisition and concealment property.
The Prosecutor's Office claims that the two investigators and the member of the criminal group already in the second half of 2020, when the Prosecutor's Office was collecting evidence for the "Mountain" action, the members already knew that they were being followed by special investigative measures, so all the work of the prosecutors fell into the water.
The suspects also provided information about the double murder that took place in March 2021, when Burim Vardari and Afrim Berisha, who is related to Bedri Berisha, a member of the "Baron" drug clan, were shot in Topansko Pole, in Skopje. Regarding the murder, the criminal group was informed about who is detained in the police station and what the officials involved in the criminal investigation are doing.
The leaking of official secrets began in December 2019, when the crime group threatened a victim of an attempted murder to change his statement to the police. They threatened to attack him and members of his family. The victim is now deceased.
The criminal group was also informed about the murder that happened in August 2020, as well as about the kidnapping that happened in September 2020. Five people were suspected of the abduction, and the group was told what evidence was provided and what statements the witnesses gave about this event. The group most likely involved in these heinous acts was one step ahead of the police so that their involvement would not be documented. The biggest blow was given to her before the departure of Oliver Spasovski from the ministerial position.
Evidence is drawn from the sky app
In the large police action that was carried out at the end of January, out of 16 suspects who were part of an international criminal group that smuggled cocaine and was involved in murders and attempted murders, in the village of Grcec and throughout Skopje, the police found and arrested only six, and five are on the dock. The police did not find Muaremi, but then publicly confirmed his leadership of the group for the first time and gathered evidence that he procured cocaine from Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, transported it to the countries of the European Union, and part of it ended up on the Macedonian drug market.
The group's crimes were documented through the Sky app, which is used by criminal groups around the world. That app has the ability to encrypt messages so that they can only be read by those for whom those messages are intended, while messages and pictures from Sky cannot be opened on other devices. The decoding of the messages of this application was done by investigative teams from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and what was decoded are now experts of the Department of Crime Techniques in the Ministry of the Interior.
So far, there is evidence that the Grcec group headed by Muaremi organized two purchases and transports of cocaine from Latin American countries to the EU and Macedonia.
The group organized the purchase of 435 kilograms of cocaine in Brazil, which was transported by water to the Belgian port of Antwerp. But the cocaine, part of which was supposed to end up in Macedonia, was seized by the customs officials.
They were also involved in the transportation of 106 kilograms of cocaine that arrived in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from Peru, and a portion was also expected for the Macedonian market. They also organized several transports of cocaine from Belgium to Macedonia, as well as from Albania to Macedonia.
Chevalj Muaremi's group is only part of larger international criminal groups, which are also involved in organizing the procurement and transportation of cocaine, and they are most likely in charge of the Macedonian cocaine market, a drug that has been "in" in recent years. But the three leaders of the Grcec/Ducanjik mafia did not fall into the hands of the police. Muaremi has been living abroad for years, and the two former leaders of "Dukandjik", Orhan Bajrami Oki and Jeton Krivanjeva-Žila, were killed in mafia clashes. The criminal group from Grcec, according to the information provided by the Ministry of Interior, is accused of one attempted murder, the murder of an Albanian citizen, as well as the double murder in Topansko Pole. The attempt to kill Boris Mutkov Phantom happened in 2019, when he was shot in the village of Bardovci where he lives.
At that time, information was published that the shooting was related to the attack that took place in the "Alexandar Palace" hotel, when members of the "Dukanjik" and "Grcec" groups were shot. Fantom was considered a friend of Jellal Ayeti Djeljo from Arachinovo, who was the leader of the "Belanotsa" group.
The police have evidence of the murder of an Albanian citizen whose body was found on May 15, 2020 in the village of Gorna Matka. The corpse was found in a state of decomposition and was buried in a hole. Apart from these gruesome events, they are also connected to the double murder in Topansko Pole, about which the policemen provided information.