Vucic claims Vracar clan is extorting Serbian businessmen

Aleksandar Vucic posted a video on his Instagram profile @avucic on November 3, claiming that a criminal clan from Vracar is sending threats to successful people across Serbia and demanding money from them. Vucic, the former president of Serbia and the head of the SNS list that lost the October 25 parliamentary election to the Student List, says this is happening “under the auspices and protection of the student list”.

The same day, Danas reports that Vucic has returned to his old office at the Serbian Progressive Party headquarters in New Belgrade, from where, according to the paper, he addresses the public as the leader of the parliamentary opposition.

What did Vucic say in the video?

He opened the address with the sentence: “Dear citizens, terror literally reigns in Serbia.” In his words, this is one branch of the Montenegrin criminal clans, and the threats go mostly to businesspeople who have money. He described the campaign as one of the most repulsive in Serbia since 1945.

In the video he read out messages that he says the clan sends. They begin with a greeting, “Good evening”, and the senders introduce themselves as “comrades from Vracar” and ask the recipient to get in touch “so we can talk normally”, or, as the message puts it, “so we can wage war”. When the recipient replies that he does not know who they are, the next message, according to Vucic, reads: “you will get a million euros ready or you will be slaughtered”.

Vucic named five cities as the places where this is happening. “They barge into companies from Nis, Arandjelovac, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica,” he said, and added that the same is going on in Belgrade restaurants: “They barge into Belgrade restaurants, they extort people, and all of it under the auspices and protection of the student list.” He also described how, he claims, these people behave: “They come and say: We are the winners, we are the student list.”

What does Vucic say about the police and the container?

The second part of the video concerns police work. Vucic criticizes the fact that officers, as he puts it, are guarding a container over alleged document shredding, although no shredded document has been found:

So, let me repeat: we are losing the entire police force to guarding a container over alleged document shredding, and they have not found a single shredded document so far, but meanwhile criminals do as they please and destroy Serbia.

We previously reported on Vucic’s criticism of how police handled the arrest of Marko Kricak.

What is missing from the post?

Everything above is Vucic’s own claims. Neither the video nor the media reports that carried it contain confirmation from the police or prosecutors, the names of any businesspeople who were targeted, or any information on criminal complaints filed. The messages he read out are not attached, and it is not visible who sent them. The Student List’s response to the accusation that criminals are acting in its name is also not part of the coverage we reviewed.

The old office and the party presidency

Danas reports that Vucic had addressed the public a few days earlier in a video from the same SNS headquarters office. He said then: “We set out on big things 16 years ago from our offices in New Belgrade. From the same offices we are now setting out on new battles, new challenges and new victories.”

Formally, Vucic is only a member of the SNS Presidency. The party’s official president, Milos Vucevic, has called an extraordinary SNS assembly for December 13 and proposed Vucic as the new president. According to Danas, Vucic should also become a member of parliament and head of the parliamentary group, which would make him the first president of Serbia to take that role after leaving the office. Danas adds that Vucic is continuing the practice of addressing the public every day, similar to the one he kept while in power, but on a smaller scale.