An offshore company of the State Security Cadre paid 1 mln. per person convicted of the murder of journalist Ivo Pukanic

Prosecutors in the case of a murdered journalist in Croatia suspect that the murder was paid for by a transfer of 780,000 euros to the account of one of the murderers. But they never found out who sent the money. Leaked documents from the Cyprus Confidential investigation reveal the name of the owner of the company that made the payment – the Bulgarian Ognian Bozarov – as well as his business ties with the convicted murderer Slobodan Djurović.

Important:

• British Virgin Islands-based General Pioneer pays Slobodan Djurovic, one of the men convicted of murdering journalist Ivo Pukanic, over 1 million euros with two transfers. One transfer, worth 780,000 euros, was sent just three weeks before Pukanić’s murder, Croatian prosecutors say.
• The leaked documents reveal that the owner of General Pioneer is Bulgarian businessman Ognyan Bozarov.
• An email seen by reporters showed that the €780,000 payment to Djurovic was described by Bozarov’s daughter as “extremely urgent.”
• Company documents show that Djurovic worked for Bozarov’s company for several months before Pukanić was killed, but left the company three days before the murder.
• Montenegrin anti-money laundering officials have questioned Djurovic’s explanation for the payment, according to a report seen by reporters.
• Slobodan Djurovic is the “right hand” of the famous Serbian crime boss Sreten Josić, who was tried and acquitted of this murder. Bozarov has met with Josic.
• Ognian Bozarov was a prominent cadre of the State Security, and after the changes he did business with Russian MP Alexei Chepa, close to Putin, who is under Western sanctions.

By Dragana Pecho (OCCRP/KRIK), Vesna Radojevic (KRIK) and Atanas Chobanov (BIRD)

In October 2008, a scooter packed with explosives exploded in a parking lot outside the Zagreb office of Nacional, a weekly magazine known for its sensational headlines and revelations of political and business scandals. The scooter is placed next to a car used by the founder of the publication, Ivo Pukanić. He died instantly in the explosion, along with a colleague.

Two years later, a Croatian court convicted six men of Pukanić’s murder, and they received a total of 163 years in prison. Prosecutors say organized crime figures from several Balkan countries were involved in planning and executing the killing.

The court found that the “main intermediary” in organizing the murder was Slobodan Djurović, born in Montenegro but living in Serbia. Interpol and several other regional police agencies describe him as an important figure in an organized crime group known in the criminal world as “The Cardinal”. He received a sentence of 23 years in prison, but it was never established who ordered and paid for the murder.

Prosecutors allege that money from a mysterious transfer of 780,000 euros ($780,000) to Djurovic’s personal bank account in Montenegro was used to pay some of the killers, but the trace of the money seems to end there. The payment came from a company called General Pioneer Inc., but it is registered in the British Virgin Islands, whose strict corporate secrecy rules make it difficult to determine the ultimate owners. The identity behind General Pioneer remains a mystery after the trial.

But now, thanks to leaked documents from Cypriot corporate services provider MeritServus, reporters from OCCRP partners KRIK in Serbia and BIRD in Bulgaria have finally been able to identify the owner of the company. This is the Bulgarian businessman Ognyan Bozarov.

The reporters found no direct evidence that Bozarov ordered or played any role in the murder of Pukanić, but the leaked documents — combined with information gathered by KRIC reporters from corporate documents and court records — offer a new reading of Djurović’s business relationship with Bozarov on the eve of the murder.

Documents from the murder trial and from the Serbian commercial register show that Bozarov hired Djurovic at least a year before the murder through another company he owns, which is registered in Serbia. Djurovic left his post in this company called Karizia LLC just three days before Pukanic was killed.

Recently leaked documents from the Cyprus Confidential global investigation reveal for the first time that General Pioneer paid Djurovic 255,000 euros once and 780,000 euros after another five months.

KRIK asked Croatian prosecutors if they had checked the ownership of General Pioneer, but the questions remained unanswered. It is unclear whether prosecutors knew or investigated the earlier payment of 255,000 euros.

In a written statement to OCCRP, Bozarov said he “certainly did not orchestrate [Pukanić’s] murder” and never threatened or hurt anyone. Bozarov said that all payments made through his companies were “purely for business purposes”.

Throughout the interrogations in the case, Djurovic claims that the large payment he received was related to a land deal in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. But new documents obtained by reporters raise questions about whether the criminal’s business relationship with Bozarov made economic sense and whether the payments to him were actually linked to a legitimate property deal.

The leaked MeritServus files were obtained by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets and initially shared with OCCRP and the Guardian. This investigation is part of Cyprus Confidential, a global investigative collaboration led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Paper Trail Media.

On target

Ivo Pukanić did not lack enemies. Frankly and unapologetically, he used his extensive network of contacts in politics, business and the underworld to dig up materials for the scandalous headlines and photos he published on the pages of Nacional, which he co-founded in 1996.

His colleagues criticized him publicly for his friendships with controversial businessmen and criminals, but he also published significant investigative stories about powerful individuals. His investigations into the wealth of former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader have attracted widespread attention. This is what happened with a series of publications about the ties between the then President of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic and the controversial Serbian businessman Stanko Subotic. Pukanic wrote extensively about Subotić and Djukanovic’s alleged links to cigarette smuggling. When Italian prosecutors opened a case against Djukanovic in 2002, the journalist was one of their witnesses (Djukanovic invoked diplomatic immunity to have the charges dropped in Italy.)

After the first attempted murder of Pukanic in April 2008, he received police protection. But despite the guards, after his death it became clear that he had been monitored three months before his murder in 2008 and that the murder had been planned so carefully that a Serbian sniper was waiting on the roof of a nearby building to shoot him in case the bomb did not detonate or the explosion did not kill him.

Happy

While the mastermind behind Pukanić’s murder was never identified, an important figure in organized crime was tried in Serbia for orchestrating the murder: Sreten Josic, or “Joca Amsterdam” (so called because of his base in the Netherlands), a Serbian drug lord and notorious criminal.

A 2008 Interpol report from Serbia, coordinated with Dutch and French authorities, described Slobodan Djurovic as Sreten Josic’s “right-hand man” and claimed that he ran Josic’s business and bought companies on his behalf. According to another Interpol Montenegro report from the same year, Djurovic was Josić’s “godfather” in the 1990s.

Serbian prosecutors indicted Josic in 2009, alleging that he orchestrated Pukanić’s murder, but he was eventually acquitted after a judge ruled that prosecutors had not provided sufficient evidence of his connection to the murder.

Sreten Josic’s lawyer did not respond to written questions.

BIRD’s comment:

Sreten Josic is a well-known figure in Bulgaria. He resided in our country for years before being expelled to the Netherlands, and from there to Serbia, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of Goran Marijanović. During his trial, Josic claimed that in Bulgaria he “had an umbrella from the Bulgarian security services”.

A BIRD reporter asked Bozarov on the phone if he knew Sreten Josic and if he had met him, to which Bozarov answered in the affirmative. Bozarov said that he had seen Sreten Josic once, but did not answer the question of what they discussed.

“Extremely urgent” payment

During Josic’s trial in Serbia, Djurovic was questioned about the 780,000 euros he received in his bank account. He says the money was paid “by my Bulgarian friends” in exchange for his help in submitting documents to the Belgrade city administration for a land deal. When asked why he was paid such a large sum for a simple task that “anyone could… to do”, he does not give a clear answer.

Montenegrin anti-money laundering investigators also questioned the explanation for bank transfers during the trial, and told Croatian investigators that Djurovic withdrew €60,000 from his account in Montenegro the day after the transfer from General Pioneer. Croatian authorities shared the findings with their Serbian counterparts, who later claimed in the indictment that this withdrawal of money was part of the way Djurovic paid the other conspirators in the murder.

Trial protocols and leaked documents provide further evidence that Djurovic and Bozarov worked together for many months before Pukanić was killed.

When police arrested Djurovic six days after Pukanić’s murder, they confiscated two phones from him. Although the police and the prosecutor’s office did not note this fact at the time, KRIK journalists, rummaging through the old court records, found tel. Bozarov’s numbers in Bulgaria and Cyprus among Djurovich’s contacts.

The earliest evidence of Djurovic and Bozarov working together comes from November 2007, when Djurovic transferred a Serbian company called Karizia to another company, eventually owned by Bozarov, for a nominal fee of €500, covering the funds Djurovic injected into the creation of Karizia.

Djurovic sold Karizia to another Serbian company in November 2007, which became owned by Tymara Holding SA in Luxembourg. Although Tymara’s ownership is not public in the Luxembourg archives, in leaked emails, Bozarov’s daughter says her father owns 50 percent of the company, and in another email, she claims that Karizia belongs to them.

Djurovic used the company to apply to the Belgrade Public Agency for Land Management for a 99-year lease of a landed property. The lease was approved in September 2007, and the contract was signed on November 5, 2007 – three days after the transfer of Karizia to Bozarov’s company. On December 1, 2007, shortly after the transfer of Karizia to Bozarov, Djurovic signed a contract with Genera Pioneer to help increase the area on which Karizia

has the right to build. His commission for this is set at 255,000 euros, although obtaining permission to expand the construction area requires simply paying a higher fee. General Pioneer has no official affiliation with Karizia, and it is not clear why Bozarov used this company for the payment to Djurovich.

Although it does not officially own Karizia, General Pioneer gave this Serbian company a loan of 5 million euros, granted in several installments, under the terms of a contract from January 2008.

It is also unclear why this additional agreement was concluded at all, since Djurovic remained CEO of Karizia after the transfer of ownership of the company, which means that he continues to work in the company as an employee of Bozarov.

In May 2008, the application was granted by the Belgrade City Administration, and more than €255,000 was deposited into Djurović’s Serbian account.

A second contract between Djurovic and General Pioneer dated September 19, 2008 sets out the terms of the second payment of €780,000 as additional compensation for the successful increase in the size of the permitted buildings on the plot. Djurovic was still an employee of Karizia during the second payment.

The leaked correspondence indicates that the payment of 780,000 euros was made urgently. In an email to a Cypriot service provider who helped run General Pioneer, sent a day before the transfer was made, Bozarov’s daughter wrote that the payment for Djurovic was “extremely urgent” and was due “tomorrow morning, the first thing if possible.”

Then, just three days before the murder of Pukanic, Djurovic resigned as director of Karizia and left the company, whose ownership was simultaneously transferred to a Cypriot company.

Bozarov did not directly answer questions about his business with Djurovich, but said all payments from his companies were backed by “valid contractual documentation,” and he and his lawyers shared copies of General Pioneer contracts signed with Djurovic related to the land deal.

But more than 15 years after the signing of these documents, nothing has been built on the plot. When KRIK reporters visited the site earlier this month, they found it empty, overgrown with vegetation and littered with waste.

Who is Ognyan Bozarov?

The 76-year-old Bozarov is relatively unknown even in his native Bulgaria. One of the few public mentions of it is found in a 2011 book by Hristo Hristov, a Bulgarian researcher and journalist. Hristov writes that Bozarov worked for the Scientific and Technical Intelligence from the time of communism, serving the dictatorship of Todor Zhivkov, who was in power for 35 years until the fall of communism in 1989.

U.S. Department of Justice documents show that the Bulgarian embassy in Washington came to Bozarov’s aid when he was arrested there on charges of sending computer technology to Bulgaria in violation of export controls in the 1980s. The documents show that the embassy covered the costs of a law firm for Bozarov and another Bulgarian.

The charges were eventually dropped, according to U.S. court records, but a Bulgarian lawmaker later asked parliament who had paid Bozarov’s $250,000 bail.

Bozarov did not answer questions about whether he was connected with intelligence.

Comment from the editors of BIRD:

According to Hristo Hristov’s research, Bozarov heads the secret Bulgarian-Russian operation “Neva” and has a key role in the fraudulent companies through which millions were siphoned off after the fall of communism. Hristov has no doubt that Bozarov has a connection with the Scientific and Technical Intelligence of the State Security.

“Neva” is a top-secret project for the transfer of stolen Western technology to the USSR. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated to Bulgarian companies to build a hard drive plant in Kostroma. Bozarov is at the head of the state-owned company Insist, which coordinates the project. A large part of the money disappears in the accounts of foreign companies created by Insist. However, the connection between General Pioneer and Insist is traceable from the documents available in the Cyprus Confidential.

Hristov also claims that Bozarov is the nephew of Todor Zhivkov, but Bozarov himself denied this in a telephone conversation.

Bozarov’s apparent business activity in Bulgaria since the fall of the communist regime has been mainly in the real estate sector, where he is a partner with Russian lawmaker Alexei Chepa, sanctioned for his proximity to Putin and his support for Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Bozarov and Chepa invest tens of millions in the Emerald resort in Ravda. To this day, Alexei Chepa’s son Daniil and Ognyan Bozarov’s daughter Lydia are partners in the company he owns Vertigo Business Center in Sofia.

Bozarov’s implicit business includes a wide network of offshore companies that invest in countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

From implicit to offshore

More than thirty years after the fall of the communist regime, which was declared criminal, the secret economic networks created by the regime for “hidden transit” – including trafficking in drugs, weapons, excise goods and technology – continue to be relevant. Even stealing Western technology is still on the agenda because of the embargo against Russia.

The connection with crime bosses controlling post-communist drug trafficking channels is beginning to come to light. As well as the scale of the financial resources controlled by these networks.

However, a large part of the secrets about the genesis of the “implicit companies” and the agent networks around them are still buried in the archives of the State Security. In Bulgaria, they are guarded more strictly than NATO classified information. For their final declassification and provision to researchers, it seems that there is no political will to this day.

Maintaining the secrets of the State Security and the new secret offshore zones has an ominous price. Journalists from BIRD have participated in the largest international investigations into offshore companies – the Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers and the Cyprus Confidential. In the current investigation, for the first time, leaked documents on secret offshore ownership bring to light monetary transactions associated with contract killing. The offshore company is owned by a DS cadre, and the murdered person is a journalist. Cyprus Confidential | OCCRP | Authors: Dragana Pecho (OCCRP/KRIK), Vesna Radojevic (KRIK) and Atanas Chobanov (BIRD) | Lead collage: Miodrag Ćakić/KRIK

cyprus-confidential

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