Miroljub Petrović likes to talk about theocracy. And the people seem to like to listen to it. In a recent show on KTV, he talked for two hours about how God intended to arrange life on earth, why a wife should obey her husband and how Njegoš's priests were "sharp sabers".
And again, like every time Petrović appears somewhere, videos on YouTube have tens of thousands of views. There can be over a million of them.
Petrović is a creationist, an advocate of theocracy and a YouTube star, and recently he can officially be called a quack.
Deadly advice
The trial against him dragged on for five years, after two people died since Petrović advised them to treat the tumor with herbal diet, tinctures, juices, showers and walks, he ordered them to avoid chemotherapy and, in general, official medicine.
"The objective and independent media in Serbia discovered that I was engaged in illegal activities, that I poisoned people and took their money and did many other ugly things," Petrović said sarcastically after his verdict was confirmed in early March.
"I admitted to the court everything that was published by the objective and independent media." "I admitted that in one of my previous lives I treated the Russian emperor Peter the Great, who died of a bladder infection in 1725," Petrović continued.
He called the court's decision "merciful" because it fined him 100.000 dinars, plus 145.000 dinars in court costs. Mobile phones and laptops were allegedly permanently confiscated from Petrović and his guests who were in the house, and the "natural medicines" that he resold were also taken from him.
This is how - with a penalty barely larger than one average salary - the only process against Miroljub Petrović, a man who has been clearly and without hiding for years engaged in quackery and the establishment of fake "universities" and "institutes" that accredit fake accreditation institutions that supposedly exist, ended for now - and in fact they do not exist - in the United States.
It did not harm Petrović's popularity with the audience at all, on the contrary. Moreover, by breaking into TikTok and focusing other social networks on video clips, Petrović jumps at an increasingly younger audience with short clips, often humorous, often bizarre.
Short media isolation
After he hit the headlines in 2019, many started to shun him. Even Balkan info, the YouTube channel that made Petrović famous and which Petrović made famous, distanced itself from him for a while and did not invite him as a guest.
"Peaceful, you are a man completely unaware of your situation. You are a man facing prison. "Instead of defending yourself, you are talking about Greater Serbia and Durrës," said Milomir Marić to his guest Petrović in those days in 2019.
And he called him so many times to entertain the audience by invoking theocracy, cursing vaccines and praising Vučić. When it got thick, Marić said that he called Petrović as a "showman" and a "witty man" and that nothing was serious.
"I never said that I could heal anyone," defended Petrović in those days, who appeared on television together with the sister of the deceased man to whom he gave advice. "And I'm sorry that a lot of people didn't get the message that I can give people advice on how to heal themselves."
Petrović always advises people the same: a healthy life, vegetarianism and Orthodoxy, avoiding vaccines and "morons", which in his dictionary is code for official education. He further advises the introduction of theocracy and Dušan's Code, the fiddle and the Bible, learning the real Serbian Illyrian history, and he also has a series of lectures on how to get married well.
Entertainment potential was and remains a guarantee for clicks on YouTube. He became famous with the line "You're going under the sword, brother", when he spoke about how to solve the problem of drug dealing. Petrović's interviews on Balkan info, some of them four and a half hours long, had an average of close to half a million viewers.
Fake institutes and universities
Only when he was accused of driving someone to his death with "advice" did the Ministry of Education deal with Petrović's Institute for Natural Medicine.
Perhaps precious time and some human lives would have been saved if the authorities had reacted to the text published in "Vremen" more than a decade ago. At that time, Petrović was not yet a YouTube star, but he was seen as a creationist in the illegal business of educating and healing people.
Under the title "Universal University for This and That" it was written there about the network of Petrović's quasi-universities that operate without accreditation and even registration with the Agency for Business Registers. Then the Educational Inspectorate told us that these online universities do not have a license to operate, but the inspectorate and the prosecutor's office did not interfere in their work until the episode with the tragic deaths of "clients".
The faculties are allegedly registered in the USA. As "Vreme" found out, the addresses in Sacramento and New York's Richmond Hill, where the Center for Naturalistic Studies and the Institute of Natural Medicine were located, are actually private homes.
"Since the studies are online, there is no need for larger premises" - this is how the secretary of the Institute answered the inquiry we submitted in 2013.
There is not a single "faculty" run by Petrović and his team on the list of the US Department of Education. The Petrović Institute stated that it has accreditation granted by The International Accreditation Board for Studies in Natural Medicine.
"Vreme" discovered through a domain search that the website of the "international board" was registered to Željko Stanojević, Petrović's business partner. After the findings were published, the site was shut down.
At those "universities" you could study anything, from nutrition to Hebrew and national history to organic agriculture. "Studies" cost from 400 to 1.800 euros, literature is available on the Internet, exams are taken via e-mail, and those who are in a hurry can quickly acquire a worthless diploma.
Although "Vreme" tracked down a number of participants, there is no evidence that the interest was massive.
Vivid lecturers and scammers
For years, at least thirteen websites of the mentioned "universities" and "institutes", miroljubpetrovic.net, skenderbeg.rs, and several websites selling products with the Institute's labels promising to cure incurable diseases such as cancer and Parkinson's disease, were run in Petrović's name.
According to the opinion of a lawyer asked by "Vreme" for an interpretation, there is a lot of work for the authorities here due to fraud, work without a permit, non-payment of taxes and quackery.
The list of "lecturers" contained vivid names such as Jovan Deretić or Branislav Peranović, whom Petrović regularly praises as an expert in the treatment of drug addicts. In 2013, Peranović was sentenced to 20 years in prison for of the aggravated murder of a resident of the Center for drug addiction rehabilitation in Jadranska Lešnica.
Or "doctor" Milisav Nikolić whom Petrović mentions as "the world's best orthopedist". Petrović also recommended Nikolić's booklet "Miracle of Healing" to two young men whom he "advised" and died.
In that illiterate manual, Nikolić recommends compresses made of clay, lobelia and wild rosemary for brain cancer, and hot pepper for AIDS. He says that AIDS is completely cured in a few months with natural treatments. Nikolić, by the way, completed his studies at the Faculty of Physical Education, and received his "doctorate" nowhere else than at Petrović's "institute", where he now teaches.
Who is Miroljub Petrović?
He was born in Odžaci in 1965 as a descendant of the Kuča tribe from today's Montenegro. In the genealogy he drew himself, the "greatest Serbian hero" Đurađ Kastriot Skanderbeg is listed as his direct ancestor.
It makes a strong reference to the origin. "When you look at today's peoples, they don't care at all about their origin, their history. Of course, when they match dogs and horses, they look at the pedigree."
Those who appreciate bizarre shows like "Pearls" or "Nolet Seksomana" met Petrović in the spring of 2000 through the lecture series "Miracles of Creation" on Belgrade TV "Palma". Seventeen times for half an hour, he talked about the biblical creation of the world. At that time he was gaunt, sunken-faced, just as talkative but not nearly as interesting as he is today.
The series "Miracles of Creation" came before the Teaching Council of the Department of Paleontology of the Faculty of Mining and Geology in Belgrade. "From the moment when M. Petrović started propagating the so-called scientific creationism, he publicly declared himself to be a true opponent of all valid and fundamental scientific postulates in geology," the minutes of the session of June 20, 2000 read.
With eight votes in favor and one abstention, it was decided to prevent Petrović from obtaining a master's degree, which was a precedent. Petrović claims that the panel intended to re-examine the scientific justification of the previously approved master's thesis on the Lower Jurassic shells of Stara Planina.
According to that version, the council did not meet, and Petrović decided to fight the matter and finish his studies abroad. He claims to have studied at the International Institute of Original Medicine, an online college whose degrees are not recognized by anyone.
The bogus college is accredited by the American Board of Certification of Naturopathic Medicine, a phantom organization whose website bears no name. Moreover, the site is registered with the help of a platform that offers anonymity to the domain owner.
Petrović then arrives at the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University in Iași, Romania. This university, for a change, is the oldest in the country. There, Petrović, about which there is a record on the university's website, received his doctorate in philosophy in 2011 with the thesis "Creationism and evolutionism - a semiotic approach".
"Under the sword, brother"
He recorded his return to public life in 2012, when he filmed dams on the North Sea in the Netherlands and stated that a group of Serbian intellectuals was planning to blow up the dams if "patriots Šešelj, Mladić and Karadžić" were not released from Scheveningen.
Because of this, he was detained in Belgrade, and later he said that he was "joking around" and "acting as a reporter". It is the first time that Petrović, known for his creationism, has spoken publicly.
One journalist, who has been privately with Petrović many times, says that he is the same in the pub as in the studio. He really doesn't drink alcohol and doesn't eat meat. He likes to be the center of attention, but he is not pushy and listens patiently. The only thing he admits, said the "Vremena" interlocutor, is that he inserted expletives like "under the sword, bato" into the interviews because he knows it attracts attention.
Petrović is not happy when kids on the street come up to take pictures just because they caught a few jokes. He would prefer that they read the Old and New Testaments. "So you work on yourself, intellectually, spiritually." "You read the Holy Scriptures, you take off your clothes, you connect with God," he repeats constantly.
Before turning to sarcasm, he described all criticism of him and the quackery he practices as a "modern inquisition", attacks by "henchmen, chickens and Satanists". "But everything has an end. When we read the Scriptures, we see that in the end we win."
