Prosecutors Break Silence Over Vladimir Cvijan's Death

The Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office spoke publicly for the first time about the death of lawyer and former MP Vladimir Cvijan on the evening of August 1, 2026, saying the cause was established back in 2018. According to the statement, Cvijan drowned, and no signs of mechanical injury were found on his body.

Cvijan was found drowned in the Danube on January 5, 2018. Prosecutors say the cause of death was determined through an autopsy and a toxicology analysis, and that the file was shelved the same year because nothing pointed to a criminal offence. What pushed the office into speaking now is a podcast by lawyer Ivan Ninic, which deals with threats Cvijan had been subjected to and with details of the autopsy findings.

What the prosecutors say

The statement calls public claims that Cvijan was murdered arbitrary, irresponsible and malicious, and adds that the office handled the case in line with the law and within its powers.

The finding itself is stated plainly:

Cvijan died of drowning, and no traces of mechanical injuries were found on his body.

The sharper part of the statement is aimed at those treating the case as a killing:

Claiming publicly that this was a murder is irresponsible and malicious, especially considering that it disturbs the family members of the deceased.

What the podcast claims

The podcast that triggered the reaction focuses on threats that, it says, were never examined. It also claims that Cvijan’s father was warned the entire family would be killed if they talked to the media, that Cvijan was buried without his surname on the headstone, and that the fact of his death was concealed for years. Those claims come from the podcast and are backed by no official document.

Before his death Cvijan worked as a lawyer, served as an adviser to former president Boris Tadic, and later sat in parliament for the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Why speak up only now?

Because the pressure came from outside the institution rather than from within it. The timeline says as much. The death was recorded in January 2018, the file was shelved that same year, Ninic inspected the case documents on February 18, 2022, and the first public explanation from prosecutors arrived on August 1, 2026.

That is eight years and seven months between the death and the first statement, and four and a half years since the contents of the file became known outside the prosecutor’s office. Through all of it the institution stayed quiet, while the case sat closed on the same finding it is now citing.

Nothing in the statement suggests the file will be reopened. Prosecutors are defending the 2018 record as it stands and are not touching the question of the threats raised in the podcast. As long as that holds, an eight-year-old autopsy finding is the only thing set against claims spreading outside official channels, and that is a hard position to hold with a press release alone.