Court convicts ex-Red Star player of money laundering

The Appellate Court in Belgrade has found Zoran Njegus guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to two years in prison. The ruling was handed down on July 31, 2026. The same decision strips the former Red Star Belgrade player of 650,000 euros.

The court established that Njegus took the cash from Vitomir Bajic at Zlatibor, the mountain resort in western Serbia. The payments ran from September 2009 to March 2010. The money went into commercial premises at Zlatibor, with Njegus registered as their formal owner. That arrangement, the court found, concealed where the funds had come from.

Sixteen years passed between the last of those payments and this verdict.

Who else was sentenced

The case does not stop at one name. The same ruling sentenced three more defendants:

• Draginja Bajic, the widow of Vitomir Bajic, received four years and three months in prison and a fine of 500,000 dinars
• Zeljko Papic got two years and a 500,000 dinar fine, and lost a 151.84 square meter apartment in New Belgrade
• Nebojsa Djokic got three years and nine months and a 500,000 dinar fine, and forfeited his full stake in the company Parket Planet

The asset seizures were ordered defendant by defendant. An apartment, a company stake and cash all sit in the same column of the judgment.

Why is this the second second-instance ruling?

Because the court’s first attempt did not survive. The trial court had acquitted the defendants. The Appellate Court then convicted Njegus in April 2025 and gave him two years, the same term he received now.

That decision was quashed in February 2026 for inadequate reasoning. The file went back to a second-instance panel, which took fifteen months to arrive at the same number.

This ruling is not the end of the case either. Because the first-instance verdict was an acquittal, the defendants may appeal this conviction to a third-instance panel of the same Appellate Court. Both the prison terms and the confiscations will be decided once more.

Who Vitomir Bajic was

Bajic never appeared before a Serbian court. He died in custody in Italy, where criminal proceedings were being conducted against him, before the Belgrade trial began. His name stayed in the indictment as the source of the money, but he never presented a defense in this case.

Bajic was linked to the group led by Darko Saric, which smuggled cocaine from Latin America into western Europe. The court read the money that reached Zlatibor through that connection. A money laundering conviction requires exactly that kind of link, since the offense turns on where funds originate rather than on how they are spent.

From Red Star to the dock

Njegus wore the Red Star shirt from 1995 to 1998. He moved to Spain after Belgrade and played for Atletico Madrid and Sevilla. He also appeared for the Yugoslavia national team.

That biography is why the case draws attention outside legal circles. It carries no weight in the judgment itself. The court ruled on cash handed over at Zlatibor and on the premises bought with it.

Two clocks are now running for Njegus. One is the deadline to appeal to the third-instance panel. The other is enforcement of the 650,000 euro confiscation, which waits on how that appeal ends.