Uros Zivkovic Car Arson: Police Reportedly Probe Extortion

Police are unofficially checking whether the arson of singer Uros Zivkovic’s Audi Q8 in Cukarica was an attempted extortion. Telegraf reported on November 4 that Zivkovic told police he had allegedly received threats a few days earlier, along with a demand to prepare a certain amount of money.

Neither the amount nor the sender’s identity is known. The singer has not confirmed this publicly.

What is known about the Audi Q8 arson?

The car was set on fire on November 3 at around 4:20 a.m. Kurir places the location more precisely, in the Belgrade neighborhood of Banovo Brdo. Security camera footage, which police have taken, shows two men in dark clothing and hoods. They approached the parked vehicle, set its front end on fire and fled. They have not been identified.

The front of the car was badly damaged. The fire also reached the garden wall of the family house, which cracked. Kurir writes that the car, with its equipment, is worth around 100,000 euros.

One of the neighbors told Telegraf what he heard and saw:

It was around 4:20 in the morning, and the neighborhood was completely silent.

In the rest of his account he described a dull thud, flames that lit up the building and two men running down the street. His name has not been published.

What did Zivkovic say, and what did he not?

Zivkovic confirmed the incident to Kurir:

I confirm the reported information, but at this moment I would not like to go into details.

That sentence refers to the burned car, not to the threats or the demanded money. The singer asked the media for understanding. He handed police recordings from his private cameras. Kurir also reports that the prosecutor’s office has been informed of everything.

According to Telegraf, investigators are going through calls, messages and other communication from before the attack. The aim is to establish whether it was an attempted extortion or a warning.

What do Kurir’s anonymous sources claim?

Kurir’s unnamed sources say Zivkovic has been under pressure for almost two years from a group they call the estrada mafia. The alleged reason is that he refused to hand over half of his concert earnings. The pressure, the same sources claim, came through canceled performances and false bomb threats at clubs where he sings.

Kurir does not confirm this with other sources and says only that there is speculation. The same goes for a story from showbiz circles that the same crew threw a bomb at the house of Zdravko Colic in Dedinje earlier this year. A link between the two cases has not been confirmed.

What does Blaza Markovic say?

Blaza Markovic, a former Interior Ministry officer, spoke on Kurir television. His assessment is unambiguous:

This is plain arson, the car was set on fire on purpose.

He named an unpaid debt and a warning as the most likely motive. About the perpetrators he said:

Personally, I suspect the perpetrators are minors.

Markovic warns that such cases are hard to solve if the injured party does not cooperate with police. Because of the darkness, only two silhouettes can be seen on the footage. As an example he points to the earlier case involving Zdravko Colic, where, he says, the perpetrators were extremely hard to find.

Sako Polumenta on pressure in showbiz

Alongside this case, Kurir published an earlier interview with Sako Polumenta. The date of the statement is not given, and it does not concern the burning of Zivkovic’s car. In it, the singer talks about his own experience:

The estrada mafia rules, the only question is who they will target.

According to him, when he refused to let them steer his career, the threats reached his children. He said:

When they saw I wasn’t falling for the provocations, they started mentioning my children, threatening me and mentioning some bombs.

Polumenta says he stopped singing at prestigious venues because of this and performed in the diaspora.

The investigation is ongoing, and the attackers have not been identified so far.