State Within a State: How Serbian Criminal Network Controls the Special Prosecutor’s Office and Parts of the BIA

The chaos that has shaken Serbia in recent years cannot be reduced solely to external influences, geopolitical pressures, and the financing of various foreign power centers, which are by no means negligible and form part of the same anti-state octopus. Far more dangerous and destructive than any external sponsor is the internal protection mechanism—a network of individuals that has survived every government for decades, changing party jerseys while retaining control over key institutions. At the heart of this network lies a nexus of politics, security structures, and the judiciary, where certain high-ranking officials still safeguard the interests of a narrow circle of power brokers. Their role in the destruction of the state is closely intertwined with the protection of their own criminal interests…

Roots of the Čačak Network: From Radoš Mitrović (“Čuma Ciganin”) to Seizing Key Positions in the State

The rise of Mladen Nenadić, a former police officer, prosecutor, and local lawyer, now the head of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, is inseparably linked to his real and only boss, the leader of narcotics crime in Čačak, Radoš Mitrović, known as Čuma Ciganin.

Čuma Ciganin was also the true boss of another man from Čačak, the former director of the BIA, Aleksandar Đorđević, known as Đora. With Đorđević’s assistance, they managed to establish their own network of people from Čačak within the SNS, lobbying for Aleksandar Jugović from Čačak to become a member of parliament (known for appearing on television when Nenadić was first appointed prosecutor for organized crime, declaring that “Nenadić is the most honest man in the world,” as Vjerica Radeta recently testified on TV Informer, describing how he attacked and threatened her for publicly expressing doubts that Nenadić’s appointment was the best solution), as well as influencing another SNS MP, Ostoja Mijailović, whom they knew from the automotive business. The most significant “achievement” of Čuma Ciganin was the appointment of his man, the lawyer from Čačak Mladen Nenadić, as special prosecutor, despite the fact that Đorđević’s arrival at the BIA had been their first victory. Nenadić’s appointment was carried out by BIA director Aleksandar Đorđević, who, before becoming head of the BIA, had attempted to become the prosecutor for organized crime.

Mladen Nenadić was born in 1963 in Čačak and graduated from the Faculty of Law in Kragujevac in 1987. He passed the bar exam in 1990, when he joined the Čačak police department in the economic crime suppression unit, becoming its head just a few years later. His problems within the police began in 1995, when he was caught charging protection money—“protection fees”—to certain companies, after which the then head of the Čačak police department, Milan Bukarica, filed criminal charges against him. Following intervention by local power brokers, foremost among them Čuma Ciganin, the case was covered up, the criminal complaint was never submitted, and Nenadić was forced to leave the police voluntarily.

That same year, powerful protectors from Čačak appointed Mladen Nenadić as deputy prosecutor in the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Čačak. He quickly became the “favorite prosecutor” of Čačak businessmen and was known for his connections with local criminals. He established ties with judges and became highly sought after as someone who could effectively influence court proceedings. After the political changes of October 2000, Nenadić joined the Christian Democratic Party of Vladan Batić, then Minister of Justice, and in 2001 he was appointed acting Municipal Public Prosecutor in Čačak. Interestingly, around the same time, Zagorka Dolovac, then a deputy in the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad, also became a member of Batić’s party. Before the expiration of his term, following the change of government in the 2003 elections, the new Minister of Justice, Zoran Stojković, in the government of Vojislav Koštunica, requested that Nenadić step down. He was supposed to be dismissed, but local power brokers from Čačak, led by Čuma Ciganin, protected him through Velja Ilić, enabling him to leave voluntarily under the agreement that he would not apply in the competition for prosecutor.

Zagorka Dolovac, who in 2004 was a deputy in the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad, was not so fortunate. After a BIA report labeling her a British agent, Minister Stojković dismissed her, and court security escorted her out of her office. Dolovac subsequently turned toward the Democratic Party, as 2004 marked the meteoric rise of Bojan Pajtić, with whom she is connected through a family godparent relationship. She had no difficulty moving from membership in Batić’s right-wing party to the center-left Democratic Party. Thus, her godfather Bojan Pajtić had in 1995 entered the Democratic Party as a member of Milan Paroški’s far-right People’s Party, which merged with Zoran Đinđić’s Democratic Party. After Paroški left the Democratic Party in 1997, Pajtić remained with Đinđić and became a leftist, although ideology never truly interested him—only power did.

Takeover of the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office: Nenadić’s Dubious Appointment, Rigged Tests, and Early “Favors” to the Mafia

In 2004, after leaving the prosecutor’s office, Mladen Nenadić became a lawyer, a position he held until his appointment as special prosecutor at the end of 2015. Nenadić was encouraged to run for special prosecutor by Čuma Ciganin and Aleksandar Đorđević. However, he was not their first choice. The position of special prosecutor was initially offered by the two of them, at the “Padrone” club in Čačak owned by Čuma Ciganin, to Dragan Ranđelović, known as “Džakec,” a lawyer from Čačak and Đorđević’s closest friend. Ranđelović had gone too deep into the waters of “business” law to abandon everything overnight. He held stakes in several private companies in Čačak and took his share from criminals and their “operations,” as he provided them with police and prosecutorial protection in Čačak. Džakec suggested Nenadić to them, who, as an unsuccessful lawyer, accepted the offer.

Since they did not know how many candidates there would be for the position of special prosecutor, they agreed that Nenadić should apply for two posts—the chief prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Čačak and the chief prosecutor of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime in Belgrade. Their plan was to appoint Nenadić as Republic Public Prosecutor after one term at the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office. They failed in this, having underestimated Zagorka Dolovac, whom they believed lacked political support. Admittedly, Dolovac did not succeed in her own intention either, as she wanted to appoint her protégé Branko Stamenković as chief prosecutor of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime. Both Dolovac and Nenadić received second mandates.

When he first ran for the position of chief prosecutor of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, Nenadić stated in his biography that, as qualifications for this key position in the fight against organized crime in Serbia, he had seven appearances before the Special Court. Some of these cases included the “customs mafia,” counterfeiting money, arms trafficking, and a bribery case involving a public prosecutor. One of Nenadić’s clients was a defendant in the “customs mafia” case, in which the indictment was represented by Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office prosecutor Vojislav Isailović, together with prosecutorial assistant Rade Bajić, known as “Šiška” (Rade Bajić’s brother, his business associate, gave an interview to the Nova portal after March 15, 2025, presenting himself as a “victim of a sonic cannon”). Nearly two decades later, Isailović and Bajić would fabricate the “Generalštab” case under Nenadić’s leadership.

The Center for Social Stability, in the film “Generalštab – Defense of the State,” accused Isailović and Bajić of absolving one suspect of criminal responsibility in the “customs mafia” case (they refer to it as the textile case, but it is the same case), thereby enabling him to continue engaging in criminal activities under the protection he allegedly paid them for. It is suspected that Isailović and Bajić invested the money obtained in this way into real estate development projects in the territory of the City of Belgrade. At that time a defense attorney in this case, Mladen Nenadić later became special prosecutor and their superior, while the number of Nenadić’s real estate holdings began to grow. One apartment from the alleged Isailović–Bajić corruption scheme was given by Nenadić to his lover, Ivana Bursać, a preliminary proceedings judge at the Higher Court in Belgrade, who was transferred on January 1, 2026, to the special department of the Higher Court for War Crimes, reportedly against Nenadić’s strong opposition.

Ivana’s official husband, Judge Zoran Bursać, was seen in front of the Palace of Justice at a protest of around a dozen judges and prosecutors over the National Assembly’s adoption of a set of judicial laws proposed by Member of Parliament Uglješa Mrdić. Also seen at the same protest was Judge Milenko Grkinić, known for having been a member of the judicial panel in February 2003 that released Dejan Milenković, known as Bagzi, a member of the Zemun Clan, after the failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister Đinđić on the highway near the Belgrade Arena.

By securing Nenadić’s appointment, the Čačak mafia took control of the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office, but with Đorđević’s departure they lost control of the BIA. Nenadić’s appointment did not pass easily, as the professional public immediately questioned it. On the test he took as a candidate for special prosecutor, Nenadić achieved the maximum number of points; yet when he applied for the position of higher public prosecutor in Čačak, he barely passed the test, scoring 30 points, while the minimum required was 26. Notably, the test for special prosecutor is significantly more difficult than the test for higher public prosecutor.

Nenadić’s, Ranđelović’s, and Đorđević’s “man” was the head of the regional BIA center in Kraljevo (which also covers Čačak), Nebojša Ikodinović, a former employee of the Čačak SUP. Nenadić is directly responsible for the conduct of the competent prosecutor, Ivan Zarić, in the proceedings conducted against Nenad Kalajdžić, Vladimir Tripković, and Saša Roglić for the murder of Strahinja Ičelić (August 24, 2018).

A local mafia figure, Milivoje Kalajdžić, father of Nenad Kalajdžić, allegedly managed—through lawyer Ranđelović and Aleksandar Đorđević—to establish contact with Nenadić and, for an enormous sum of cash, secure minimal sentences for his son and the group he led for what was described as a direct, premeditated murder. By order of Special Prosecutor Nenadić, the proceedings were reportedly not even conducted; instead, the case was “resolved” through a sudden plea agreement with the killers. There is information suggesting that Special Prosecutor Mladen Nenadić is in a godparent relationship with the aforementioned drug dealer Milivoje Kalajdžić.

Of significance is also Nenadić’s role in channeling the investigation and covering up information obtained by members of the Criminal Police Directorate regarding the activities of the car theft mafia in Čačak. After a months-long investigation, at the end of 2018 the Criminal Police Directorate arrested several individuals on reasonable suspicion of stealing more than 50 luxury vehicles. Goran Ćurčić was identified as the leader of the group; his wife, Jelena Ćurčić, is a public prosecutor and spokesperson of the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Čačak. The dirty trail of this extensive investigation reportedly led Criminal Police inspectors to several judges, prosecutors, and police officers from Čačak. Individuals close to some of those arrested allegedly gave clear statements about state officials and lawyers who directly participated in these “operations.”

However, Nenadić then intervened, having allegedly received instructions from the local mafia to prevent further “digging.” Some of those arrested threatened to reveal everything they knew about criminal activity within state institutions and the legal profession, triggering widespread panic. Nenadić reportedly recognized in much of it his own wrongdoing. As a reward for their silence, some of the arrested individuals were suddenly released from detention.

Covering Up the Murder of Lawyer Miša Ognjanović: Shared Responsibility of Dolovac, Nenadić and Mandić

In 2018, when the newspaper Novosti published an article about a fight in the Čačak club Padrone, the local opposition website “Ozon Press,” run by Stojan Marković, immediately came to the defense of Čuma Ciganin’s establishment. The Čačak opposition never attacked Čuma.

The case that connected Dolovac and Nenadić was the murder of lawyer Miša Ognjanović, which occurred on July 28, 2018. Immediately after the murder, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade launched an investigation, but two days later, based on an “oral order” from Zagorka Dolovac, the case was transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime. Dolovac communicated this to a delegation of Belgrade lawyers led by attorney Zora Dobrčanin, who met with her after a public protest by Belgrade lawyers. Attorney Dobrčanin has spoken publicly about this on several occasions.

For years it was unclear how the murder case of lawyer Miša Ognjanović ended up at the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office, until in 2025—following a request by the Vaseljenska portal under the Law on Access to Information of Public Importance—the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office was compelled to respond that “the Supreme Public Prosecutor never forwarded the Ognjanović murder case to the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office.” How, then, did the case end up there? No one knows. What is known is that for eight years it has remained in Mladen Nenadić’s drawer, that the acting prosecutor is Milenko Mandić (who has been seconded to the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office for 21 years), and that nothing has been done in the case.

It is asserted that by acting in this manner, Zagorka Dolovac and Mladen Nenadić sided with the “Kavač clan” and are protecting Ognjanović’s killers—something, it is claimed, anyone familiar with Belgrade’s criminal milieu knows. The problem escalated in January 2026, when, at the retrial of Dijana Hrkalović, accused police inspector Dejan Milenković alleged that Organized Crime Prosecutor Milenko Mandić had participated in the killing of a potential cooperating witness in the Ognjanović murder case. Milenković stated that the Service for Combating Organized Crime brought to the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office a person who had confessed to the police that he was a witness to the murder of lawyer Miša Ognjanović and was willing to testify if granted protection. The witness was questioned by Prosecutor Mandić, who—after consultations with Nenadić and Dolovac—refused to grant protection. The witness was released and killed a few days later.

Who from the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office informed the Kavač clan that a witness to Ognjanović’s murder had surfaced? Dolovac? Nenadić? Mandić? Or someone else? Someone did. Those who were aware of the witness’s statement bear responsibility for his murder. They are Prosecutors Milenko Mandić, Mladen Nenadić, and Zagorka Dolovac.

After the killing of the potential witness—information that only recently came to light following Inspector Dejan Milenković’s testimony at the trial of Dijana Hrkalović—the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office reportedly took no action in the case for years. Eight years have passed since the murder; the file remains in Mladen Nenadić’s drawer; the Office is not attempting to find the killers, who remain at large; and the statute of limitations is awaited. Is any further proof needed of a direct connection between Dolovac and Nenadić and those who murdered lawyer Ognjanović?