Slovak FM: Balkan criminals bought passports

Slovak FM: Balkan criminals bought passports

BRATISLAVA -- Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak has said that "someone in Slovakia took money to help drug dealer Dragoslav Kosmajac obtain the country’s citizenship."

Lajcak said it was "a shame to know that many drug dealers from the Balkans have Slovak citizenship," pointing to Darko Šarić and an Albanian from Kosovo under the name Baki Sadiki, convicted for smuggling heroin, as examples, media in Banja Luka, RS, report.

"How is it possible that all these people bought Slovak passports? I have no doubt that someone took a huge amount of money for that," Lajcak told reporters in Slovakia.

Kosmajac, whom Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić called a few days ago "Serbia’s biggest drug dealer," received Slovakia's citizenship on September 13, 2004. The Slovak authorities announced on Wednesday that his passport had been declared "invalid."

Based on the citizenship, Kosmajac received a personal ID card enabling him to travel to all EU countries and a passport, which he used last Saturday to enter Montenegro and later, as Montenegrin authorities believe, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Media in the region reported earlier that Kosmajac had obtained his ID card at the same police station in Bratislava as Darko Šarić two years later.

On the night between Friday and Saturday, a few hours after Vučić pointed his finger at Kosmajac during a news conference, he entered Montenegro from Serbia at the Jabuka-Ranče border crossing.

Podgorica-based daily Vijesti then reported that he had been seen in Herceg Novi and that he owned a luxury villa in the small village of Štrp near the town of Risan.

Another Podgorica daily...