Borissov made a member of a dangerous drug kingpin from Kosovo

Rositsa Kirova, who was sworn in as a GERB MP today, is a partner of the famous Kosovo drug lord Ismet Osmani – “Tsuri”, arrested in 2019 in Pristina. The lady from Vidin became famous after the former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov took her a ride in his jeep and appointed her as the leader of the list of GERB. Before publicly announcing with Borisov, Kirova was the coordinator of “There is such a people” for Vidin, but after the footage of the jeep she was expelled from the party.

Kirova and Osmani together with two other persons have established the joint-stock company “Citadella BG” AD in November 2004. The subject of activity is the production of building materials, adhesives and dry mixes, as well as construction.

According to the self-signed declaration of Ismet Osmani, he is a citizen of Yugoslavia, born on 04.09.1962 and renewed his passport at the Embassy of Serbia and Montenegro in Prague.

German and Serbian Intelligence Reports: Osmani Is a Particularly Dangerous Criminal

Three months after becoming a shareholder in Citadel BG, the German intelligence BND wrote about Osmani as follows:

OSMANI Ismet, nicknamed “Tsuri”, a Kosovo Albanian based in KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, is involved in smuggling cigarettes, drugs and fuel (marijuana, heroin) and is considered particularly dangerous. It maintains close ties with UCK and TACHI, which in 1998 should have maintained heavily financially, as well as with IBISHI Nuredin (smuggling).

The BND report on Balkan organised crime with a focus on Kosovo became public knowledge after it was published on the Wikileaks platform.

Before that, Ismet Osmani was also mentioned in a Serbian police report known as the “White Paper of Serbian Organised Crime”, leaked in 2000, quoted by OCCRP’s partners from the Serbian investigative portal Krik.rs.

According to the report, which colleagues have seen at a court hearing, Ismet Osmani is the leader of a criminal organization involved in international drug trafficking channels, and in Serbia he works closely with Zvonko Veselinović, who bought the drugs from Osmani and transported them to Serbia, and in the opposite direction sold weapons to the Albanians.

Arrest in Kosovo and Curri’s political ties

In 2019, Ismet Osmani Tsuri, Ilir Boyku, Mentor Makani, Fadil Thaci and Rahim Hashimi, known as the Tsuri group, were detained in Pristina. They are still under investigation for usury, fraud, and coercion. In addition to Kosovo, this group is also suspected of participating in organised crime in the Czech Republic, where Curi is permanently resident. According to colleagues from the Czech center for investigative journalism Investigaze, the group was not the subject of an active investigation in the Czech Republic. Tsuri lived in a small town near Brno along with two other Kosovo Albanians who were convicted of drug trafficking in 2003.

The case arouses great media interest and is covered in detail in Kosovo media and the international press following the news in Kosovo and Serbia. The Tsuri group spent several months behind bars, then in October 2019, he managed to get out of custody on bail of 50,000 euros.

As mentioned in the BND report, Tsuri is considered close to Kosovo President Hacim Thaci, who faces charges of crimes against humanity by the court in The Hague. But also as a close associate of Kadri Veseli, speaker of Kosovo’s parliament. After Osmani’s arrest, a political scandal erupted after Kosovo media published photos of Osmani with Veseli and another famous UCK figure, Sami Lushtaku. Photos of Hacim Thaci with Adil Thaci, who was detained as part of the Tsuri group, were also published, the Courrier des Balkans wrote in a report on the arrest and the subsequent scandals. The French-language edition calls “Tsuri” one of the godparents of the Kosovo mafia.

With the help of our colleagues from the KRIK.rs portal who have access to court documents and population registers in Serbia, we confirm in an indisputable way that the partner of GERB MP Rositsa Kirova, the person described in the reports of the German and Serbian services and the arrested in Kosovo Ismet Osmani are one and the same person, born on 04.09.1962 in Yugoslavia.

The BRRD tried to contact Ismet Osmani’s lawyer, Alban Arifi, for comment, but he did not respond to requests for comment.

MP Kirova: I do not know such a person

On the first working day of the 45th National Assembly, our reporter spoke with Rositsa Kirova, who denied knowing Ismet Osmani.

I have no idea, it’s the first time I’ve heard from you. I don’t know this guy.

– But you are partners, you go to the Commercial Register.

I have a lot of companies and partners. It is possible, I will check, just to tell me who the company was. I know who Citadel is, there was a partner from abroad.

Rositsa Kirova promised to investigate the case and clarify it at a subsequent meeting with our reporter.

However, the documents from the Commercial Register are categorical. The company “Citadel BG” is currently in liquidation, and Kirova is a procurator. She has made several attempts to close the company, but formally this has not happened, with the registry judges issuing refusals due to missing or expired documents. The last entry in the Commercial Register dates back to 2015 and it is clear that Rositsa Kirova has handed the partners, including Ismet Osmani, an invitation to a general meeting to decide to close the company.

At present, the company “Citadel BG” is not closed and at least according to documents Rositsa Kirova and Ismet Osmani are still partners. In order to terminate these business relations, Kirova must again invite Osmani to a general meeting at which he personally or through his proxy to vote for the deletion of the company.

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