Green Ideals, Dirty Energy: The EU-backed Renewables Drive That Went Wrong

In Gracanica, a village of some 200 residents, councillor Nehro Rovcanin began receiving complaints about the new project. "No one should have been allowed to build in such a beautiful part of the country," he told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. "It violates the environment and it goes against the interests of the people."

Rovcanin called the police and managed to halt the construction - but not for long. Within days, the work had resumed. The plant's owners were missing an important document, an environmental impact report, but this did not get in the way of their plans.

The plant was inaugurated in 2016, in the same year that its owner, construction magnate Branislav "Gugi" Savic, was jailed in neighbouring Montenegro for his role in a multi-million euro real-estate scandal. The so-called "Budva affair" is better known for ending the political career of Svetozar Marovic, the last president of the rump state of Yugoslavia who had until then been the second-most powerful man in Montenegro.

A small hydropower plant might seem like a humble investment for a wealthy, well-connected businessman with a casual attitude to the law. Yet Savic was not the only such figure to have been converted to the cause of renewable energy in Serbia. To the east of the country near the Bulgarian border, the land and construction permit for a small hydropower plant were acquired by a company linked to Ljubisa Buha "Cume", a prominent Belgrade gangster best known for testifying against underworld associates implicated in the assassination of the former Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic. According to the Belgrade-based investigative outlet, CINS, key permits for the same plant were sold on to a company linked to Milos Pandrc, a convicted...