Serbia Court Finds Subotic Not Guilty of Smuggling

Serbian businessman Stanko Subotic, Mihalj Kertes, a former director of the Federal Customs, and 13 others were acquitted on Friday before the Special Court in Belgrade of charges of smuggling cigarettes in the Nineties.

The prosecution may appeal the sentences to the Appellate Court in Belgrade.

Subotic was charged with abuse of office as a figure of responsibility, which entailed a prison sentence of up to ten years. He was charged of having headed a criminal ring that smuggled cigarettes from Macedonia to Serbia in 1995 and 1996 and sold them illegally to companies and individuals.

Cigarette smuggling was performed with the help of officers of the Federal Customs Administration, the prosecution said, who allowed unregistered passage for trucks loaded with cigarettes, which were then taken to storage facilities around Serbia and sold later.

In this way, the criminal ring amassed 28 million euro and 6 million dollars worth of illegal gains.

In a first-instance ruling, Subotic was sentenced in absentia to six years of imprisonment for organising the cigarette smuggling ring. But this sentence was revoked by the Belgrade Appellate Court, which issued instructions for restaging the trial.

In mid-September 2013, Subotic presented his defence arguments before the court for the first time and denied the accusations, stating that the proceedings against him were being launched solely that politicians could extort money from him.

Before his court appearance in September, Subotic had not been available to the Serbian justice system for the previous seven years, until July 2013, when the warrant for his arrest was withdrawn in keeping with a court decision as he paid 538,000 euro in bail.