Popovic: Sapic building a private army for 692 million euros

Mila Popovic, a member of parliament for the Freedom and Justice Party and head of the party’s Belgrade branch, has said that the city administration of Belgrade is preparing a large security arrangement that she describes as a private army. In her account, it involves a so-called integrated security system contracted for ten years and financed from the city budget, and she assigns responsibility for the project to Mayor Aleksandar Sapic.

Popovic put the value of the deal at about 81 billion dinars, which by her calculation is close to 692 million euros over the whole period, or roughly 70 million euros a year. At the center of the arrangement, she claims, is the hiring of around 2,200 private guards who would patrol the streets of the capital, and she named the firms Atlas Security and T&M Group Solutions as partners that would take part in the system.

What the opposition says the city is preparing

The SSP lawmaker linked the outlined plan to earlier opposition charges that the city government is building parallel security capacities, which she has repeatedly called a “para-police.” The new arrangement, in her words, goes a step further, because instead of individual security contracts the city would gain a single, long-term financed system with its own personnel on the ground.

Popovic placed particular emphasis on what she sees as the risk of constant surveillance and control of citizens. She argued that a network of several thousand guards, connected to city video systems and databases, could grow into an instrument of monitoring that goes well beyond ordinary physical security work. Such a capacity, she claims, represents a serious security and legal risk for the capital.

She called on the city to publish the full documentation, the procurement procedures and the contracts, so that, as she put it, it becomes clear exactly who stands behind a deal of that size and by what criteria the partners were chosen. In her reading, a figure of nearly 700 million euros over a decade is far too large to remain outside full public scrutiny.

Is this about security or about watching citizens?

Popovic’s claims have so far remained at the level of an opposition assertion, since the Belgrade city administration and Sapic personally have not come out with a detailed official response to the figures and company names she cited. On earlier occasions the city government has rejected the “para-police” label and presented investment in security as a measure to raise safety in public spaces, rather than a parallel structure.

For now there is a lack of independently confirmed documents that would literally back up each of the stated figures, so it remains to wait for the city’s official response, insight into any tender procedures, and the position of the authorities responsible for public procurement and data protection. Until then the topic stays open, with a clear split: the opposition speaks of a private army and surveillance, while the city government defends its steps so far as an investment in security.

If the figures cited by Popovic prove accurate, a decade-long contract worth close to 700 million euros would be one of the largest single security deals in the city’s history. Do you think Belgrade should publish full documentation on every such arrangement before it is signed?