Suzana Jovanovic: 'You Owe Me 2,500 Marks,' Then a Report
Sasa Popovic's widow described for the first time how an unknown man accused her by phone of owing him 2,500 marks. The call went on speakerphone, then into a criminal complaint.
Suzana Jovanovic on Tuesday evening, on Amidzi Show with host Ognjen Amidzic, publicly explained for the first time why she and her husband Sasa Popovic filed a criminal complaint for harassment. The reason was a single phone call and a claim by an unknown man that she owed him 2,500 marks.
The singer says the man called with no warning and opened straight with the accusation.
My phone rings and this guy calls me: “Hi Suzana, you owe me 2,500 marks. When we were together I gave you 2,500 marks.”
Instead of hanging up, she put the call on speakerphone and brought her husband in to listen.
I put it on speaker, because when you’re clean and know you haven’t done anything wrong in your life, I said: “Here’s my husband.”
By her account, Popovic asked the caller what he wanted. That is where the conversation stopped. The man started to stammer.
Number traced, complaint filed
The couple did not wait after the call. They recorded the number it came from and went to the police.
The sequence, as she tells it, went like this:
- a call from an unknown man claiming a debt of 2,500 marks
- the call switched to speakerphone, with Popovic in the room
- the number traced and a criminal complaint filed for harassment
- police identified the caller, but the name was not disclosed to the singer
An inspector later told her the man had been found. He was not allowed to give the name, and she says she never asked for it either.
We filed a criminal complaint, the inspector told me they found him, and I said I don’t want to know.
Why didn’t police want to tell her the name?
Jovanovic says she asked only one thing: whether someone from the entertainment industry was behind the call, and whether the man had been hired.
I asked whether it had anything to do with the entertainment industry and whether someone had hired him, and it turned out to involve a colleague of mine. I never found out the name, but I’ll let that person stay person X.
The answer she got confirmed that part, that a colleague from the industry was involved. She did not push further. She says she still does not know the name and is not looking for it.
What was, by her account, the goal
The singer describes the call as a setup with a clear purpose, and not a financial one.
The goal was to create a rift, to make it look like I was cheating on Sale, that I wasn’t a good wife, a good mother, that I wasn’t the right woman for him. The goal was to end the marriage.
In the same conversation she repeated what she has said about her marriage for years: “I know I never betrayed my husband, not even in thought, let alone in deed,” and “Marriage is sacred to me.”
A detail that reveals how old the story is
The currency itself is telling. The German mark went out of cash circulation in 2002, when the euro replaced it in banknotes and coins. Whoever demanded 2,500 marks was asking for money that has not existed in that form for more than two decades. At the official conversion rate of 1.95583 marks per euro, that comes to roughly 1,278 euros.
In other words, the alleged debt is set in a time before Popovic became the face of the region’s most watched music formats. The man on the phone never explained that. By the singer’s account, he never got the chance to try.
Same show, a harder part of the conversation
The story about the complaint was only one segment of her appearance. For most of the show, Jovanovic spoke about her husband’s death and cried.
She said that for 40 days after he passed, she did not leave the house. She also pushed back on the image of herself that had circulated for years, that of a wife who cooked lunch and waited.
I wasn’t an ordinary housewife the way many imagine, sitting at home cooking lunch. I knew all of Sale’s first ideas and how they would turn out, I knew the script in advance for every format.
The name of the person who, according to Suzana Jovanovic, was behind the call has not been made public. The complaint was filed against an unknown caller, and what happened with it afterward was not something the singer addressed on the show.
