Budva Robbery: Masked Men Take 320,000 Euros From Safe
Montenegro's Police Administration says three masked men broke into a market office in Budva on Sunday evening and took about 320,000 euros from the safe, two days' worth of takings.
Budva is a city that pulls in large numbers of visitors from Serbia every August, and Montenegro’s Police Administration described what happened there in the fewest possible words: three masked men, one gun, and a safe emptied of about 320,000 euros. The still unidentified perpetrators entered the office of the Megamarket store on Sunday, August 9, at around 10:40 p.m., and were gone before officers arrived on the scene.
Three employees were in the office at the time: a manager, a woman, and two men. Montenegrin police specifically note that none of the three worked security at the market. One of the attackers was holding a gun and demanded the money from the safe.
Threatening with the firearm held by one of them, they demanded that the female employee, the manager, hand over the money from the safe, which she did.
That is how police described the actions of the three men in their statement. The manager complied, the attackers took the cash and left in an unknown direction.
Why Was There 320,000 Euros In the Safe?
According to police, the sum represents the market’s takings from the previous two days. The math is simple: the robbery happened on Sunday evening, so the safe held cash from both Saturday and Sunday, money that had not been taken to the bank over the weekend. It also shows how much cash moves through a single store on the Montenegrin coast during peak season, in a market that still runs largely on cash.
The size of the sum is also why this case will not stay a local crime story. Three hundred and twenty thousand euros in cash is not an amount that can be spent without drawing attention, and moving that kind of money across a border is usually the point where regional police pick up the first trail.
What Police Are Doing After the Robbery
The Budva Security Department’s duty service was notified at around 10:40 p.m. that a robbery had taken place and that the men who took the money had fled. Officers responded immediately, the area around the market was sealed off, and a search of the surrounding terrain was launched. An on-site investigation was carried out, and the state prosecutor at the Higher State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica was informed and is now coordinating the case.
An intensive search for the attackers is underway, along with work on their identification, location and arrest.
None of the three employees was hurt, and police say there was no physical contact between staff and the perpetrators. It also remains open whether the gun one of the attackers used to threaten the manager was real or a replica, something that has yet to be determined.
For an audience in Serbia, this is not a distant story. Budva in August is one of the destinations where much of the summer’s cash trade changes hands, and the store where this happened is one that guests from the Adriatic coast walk into every day. What stands out about this case is not the amount but the timing: the attackers went straight to the office with the safe, at the exact moment it held two days’ worth of takings, in a location with no one on security duty at the time.
Police have not released descriptions of the perpetrators, nor said whether surveillance footage from the market and nearby streets has been secured. Identification and search measures are being carried out by officers of the Budva Security Department, under orders from the prosecutor in Podgorica, with no deadline given for results.
