How Šarić edited the media: A car as a gift for deserving journalists

"Now I'm going to drive a small car, I promised that she won't take the bus to work... I have an almost new air conditioner and I'll put gas in it, it's great for the city."

These are just some of the messages that were exchanged by accused members of Darko Šarić's criminal group using encrypted phones with the Sky application while he was in the detention cell of the District Prison in Ustanička Street in Belgrade, which are included in the new indictment against Šarić that was filed in October 2022, which was confirmed by the court in December, writes BIRN.

With the aforementioned messages, Šarić and his associates agree on how to reward the journalist who did a good job - destroying the credibility of Nebojša Joksović, the most important prosecution witness in the fight against the Šarić clan.

This is not the only car that Šarić promised to journalists - by analyzing the new indictment, which was published on over 500 pages, as well as almost two thousand pages of court documents, BIRN learned that in at least one other case there was talk of a car being given to a journalist as a gift. , and there was talk of preparing unnamed gifts for employees in certain newsrooms.

In his detention cell, Šarić regularly received information about published texts from his associates via the Sky application and regularly commented on them. He was often satisfied with how journalists wrote, but there were also situations when he was annoyed by the headlines or expressions used by journalists. Then he intervened and demanded from his associates that the journalists with whom they are in contact make changes. The Sky correspondence shows that the media did that.

The media mentioned in the Sky correspondence are Blic, Alo, Kurir, Pink, TV Happy and several other media that the prosecution failed to identify. As part of this procedure, the prosecution did not further investigate who the journalists and editors were who cooperated with Darko Saric's clan, BIRN writes.

Nor was the nature of that cooperation analyzed, i.e. whether the race for exclusivity, gifts or something else were the motive for the publication of texts that obstructed the criminal proceedings against the Šarić clan.

Using the example of the attempt to discredit the witness of associate Nebojša Joksović, and based on the analysis of correspondence from Sky and other court files, BIRN illustrates how the feedback loop of leaking information between institutions, criminals and the media works.

Stevan Dojčinović, editor-in-chief of KRIK, says that "journalists, especially if they report on crime, are in contact with lawyers, even criminals, in order to find out information and it's all part of the job."

"The main rule is that the journalist and his editor decide what the story is, that is, what they will publish and when. What is not part of the job, but corruption in the media, is when criminals bribe journalists and order articles in the media," says Dojčinović. He adds that it can be seen from the Sky messages that almost all the media that falsely accused him of working for criminals, because KRIK journalists communicated with lawyer Dejan Lazarevic, the defense attorney of Darko Šarić and Veljko Belivuk, "are actually media where the criminals are really ordered texts and told them what to publish".

Leaking information: From the police, through the mafia, to the media

According to the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, since 2020, Darko Šarić planned to kill Nebojša Joksović, an associate witness, "out of reckless revenge".

Joksović is the most important prosecution witness in the fight against the Šarić clan, because he was the only one who directly accused Šarić of managing drug dealings. When they failed to kill Joksović, Šarić issued an order to discredit Joksović in order to lose his status as an accomplice witness, the prosecution claims. The public needed to be convinced that Joksović was threatening Goran Nikolašević, the witness who sided with Darko Šarić.

In the end, a bomb was placed on the hood of Goran Nikolašević's car, and the media should have labeled Joksović as the person who ordered the attack - which was not true. From the correspondence, it can be concluded that lawyer Lazarevic was in charge of deliberately spreading false news through the media and creating media pressure. Apart from the lawyer Lazarevic, Šarić's godfather Bojan Stanojković also communicated with the media.

Although they had media appearances that were useful for the Šarić clan, defense witness Goran Nikolašević and lawyer Radomir Baćović, according to the Prosecution's evidence, were not privy to this conspiracy.

The discrediting of Joksović as an accomplice witness lasted for years, and two months before the bomb was thrown at Nikolašević's car, that campaign intensified.

It all starts with the police operation "Ris", which was launched at the end of March 2020 to determine whether Darko Šarić, although in custody, managed to organize a new criminal group in order to hinder the criminal proceedings that were being conducted against him at the time. Prosecutor Saša Ivanić, after talking with Joksović, suspected that Darko Šarić and his clan would try to discredit him as a cooperating witness, writes BIRN.

According to the Sky correspondence that was published in the indictment, on April 30, 2020, prosecutor Ivanić asked the Service for the Fight Against Organized Crime (SBPOK) to start eavesdropping on the Darko Šarić clan as part of the "Ris" operation and to keep them on those "measures" the next three months. However, the lawyer Dejan Lazarevic found out about that order on the same day from the policemen from SBPOK, who in the meantime found themselves on a new indictment together with Darko Saric.

Then he starts with the obstruction of that investigation and that was the introduction to a new attempt to discredit the witness of Nebojsa Joksović's collaborator. First, in May, a certain Dalibor Ristić told the police that Joksović asked him to kill the witness Goran Nikolašević, who was part of Sarić's defense.

Then, Šarić's lawyer, Dejan Lazarević, at one of the hearings, in early June 2020, said that he had information that SBPOK was carrying out an action against Šarić and several other people close to him. At the main court hearing, Šarić also pointed the finger at prosecutor Saša Ivanić and accused him of trying to set up another trial for him.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, in order to make the police action "Ris" completely pointless, the official notes of the MUP, i.e. the statement of Dalibor Ristić, which was published in the National Daily on June 26, 2020, were delivered to Pink TV. According to the Prosecutor's Office, a day later, lawyer Lazarevic informed other members of the organized criminal group about this through the Sky app.

CA283G (SKY code, Lazarevic): Sima tells me that they went crazy after the show yesterday at Pink, when they saw the picture. a note.

The climax occurred on July 2, 2020, when the newspaper Kurir in an article entitled "Šarić, Pljevljak from prison organized a new criminal group?" published all the details about the action, including its name "Ris", as well as photos of top secret documents.

It can be concluded from the Sky correspondence that Darko Šarić was also not satisfied with the headline in the newspaper Kurir.

A day later, on July 3, the newspaper Blic published the text "Wild construction of a protected witness" on its front page. On the inside pages, the text with the title "Disputed house in Vračar, property of a protected witness" was signed by the Blic team, and it talks about how Nebojša Joksović is illegally upgrading the villa. Within the text, the street and the number of the house of the associate witness that is being written about are highlighted.

The information about the police operation "Ris", published on Pink and in Kurir, was true, according to the prosecution. "However, the journalist's source who provided that information to the media had the goal of obstructing the court proceedings in favor of the defendant," says a source from the Prosecutor's Office.

Also, according to sources from the Prosecutor's Office, there was a suspicion that people with whom Joksović is connected attempted illegal construction.

Šarić got the idea for newspaper articles about the illegal construction of a protected witness back in May. According to correspondence on the Sky application, he wrote about this to his lawyer Lazarević on May 5, 2020.

W9KW30 (SKY code, Darko Šarić): This is good, if only it were in the newspaper. And we need the same thing for Krunska, and we need to extract all the vanity he has.

On the same topic, the Blic team also wrote on July 4, the same year. About the reactions to these texts, as stated in the indictment, lawyer Lazarevic informed Darko Šarić via the Sky app...

Sarić's power has declined

The messages exchanged on the Sky platform, which were published in the indictment, show that Sarić's influence actually declined in the meantime, says Stevan Dojčinović, editor-in-chief of KRIK.

"Almost all pro-government media have been sympathetic to Darko Sarić ever since he surrendered in 2014, with the fact that it used to be at the highest level. The defense of Šarić was the editorial policy of the leading media - something like the defense today Dear Colluvia and his companies Jovanjica. Back then, Šarić didn't have to chase journalists, subsidize them and push texts through them, but the media were competing to attack those who arrested him first - first of all, policemen and prosecutors", says Dojčinović, recalling the media hunt that was conducted against former head of the criminal police, Rodoljub Milović, after Šarić called him Papaja in the courtroom.

You can read the entire text on the website BIRN.rs

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