SERBIAN SOCCER FANS: HOOLIGANS OR GANGSTERS?

UNCLAS BELGRADE 001266 SENSITIVE SIPDIS C O R R E C T E D C O P Y - ADDED SENSITIVE CAPTION E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON EINV KCOR KCRM KPRV PINR SNAR SR SUBJECT: SERBIAN SOCCER FANS: HOOLIGANS OR GANGSTERS? REF: BELGRADE 1166; BELGRADE HIGHLIGHTS SEPTEMBER 30; OCTOBER 1-2 2009 Summary -------------- ¶1. (SBU) The recent death of French national Brice Taton in Belgrade after being beaten by Serbian soccer hooligans has prompted Serbian authorities - and society - to reexamine the murky ties Serbia's two major soccer clubs (Partizan and Red Star) and their fan clubs have with organized crime. Government officials suspect that the fan clubs' members are not only involved in violence against the police, other fans and sometimes even their own players and trainers, but also allege they are engaged in money laundering, protection rackets and drug dealing. While Serbia needs to confront this problem head-on, current efforts are unlikely to break this connection between sports teams and organized crime. End Summary. Background -------------- ¶2. (SBU) On September 17, a group of Serbian hooligans beat French soccer fan Brice Taton in a popular Belgrade bar before a match between Partizan and a French team from Toulouse. He died 12 days later, sparking protests from Belgrade's citizens and strong rhetoric from authorities condemning the violence (Ref B). This beating was only the latest in a series of violent attacks and suspected criminal activities carried out by soccer team fan clubs' members. Fans of the two major Belgrade soccer clubs, Partizan (known as "Grave Diggers") and Red Star (known as "Heros") are bitter rivals whose stadiums are located less than a mile apart. Officially sanctioned fan clubs for these teams are found throughout Serbia. Opaque Ownership Structures -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The ownership structure for Serbia's largest soccer clubs is cumbersome and outdated. They are classified as publicly-owned "community organizations", governed under a 1945 law from the SFRY that theoretically allows all fans a voice in ownership through electing representatives to a club assembly. This assembly then elects a Managing Board President, who then appoints the rest of the board. Neither club has effective structures to keep track of its membership, creating opaque consortiums of individuals, businesses, and fan clubs to control elections to the fan assembly and managing board, hamstringing management's ability to act independently. There have been long-standing allegations that representatives in the assemblies of both teams are fronts for mob figures. As a result of these murky ties, individuals from fan clubs have been connected with mob figures and war criminals, including the now deceased Arkan, the famous war criminal who used Red Star and Partizan fan clubs as the main recruiting ground for his "Tiger" militia, responsible for atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia during the 1990's. Authorities have done little to investigate these allegations and combat corruption in the teams or the fan clubs. Teams Living in Fear of Fans -------------- ¶4. (SBU) Goran Vesic, a current member of the Red Star managing board, told us on October 8 that criminal activity in Serbian soccer was centered entirely in the fan clubs and not within the teams themselves. Vesic called some fan clubs "isolated power centers led by animals, who commit violence and crime." Vesic blamed the violence on a lack of morals and direction among Serbian youth, fostered by the government's failure to punish hooligans. He added that Serbia already had a law against hooligan violence modeled on English laws, but that authorities did not enforce it. As a result, team management could not control these fan groups, causing both and managers and players to live under constant intimidation, he said. Mob Ties -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Accompanying the violence, organized crime syndicates often act as "managers" for players, siphoning off money from the team and the player when a player's contract is sold between teams, both Vesic and police sources contend. According to Embassy sources with police contacts investigating the matter, the usual process is for a selling club - on the orders of a "manager" - to conspire with the buying club to pay a given (higher) price for a player's salary and then report another (lower) price to the player. The difference is then diverted to a fictitious front company outside of Serbia. Police also said they were very suspicious of the financial backing of some investors in both teams, who had somehow managed to quickly amass great fortunes in recent years from unexplained sources. Despite widespread allegations, authorities still lack the evidence to connect club management to organized crime, according to Embassy sources. Fan Clubs Filthy, Too -------------- ¶6. (SBU) While recent press reports have accused fan clubs of engaging in protection rackets, drug smuggling and other criminal activities, the size of the criminal element may be minimal. Slobodan Georgijev, a journalist who has extensively covered both team's fan clubs, told us that individual fans had ties to organized crime but that their numbers and activities were much smaller in scale than press reports indicated. According to Georgijev, there are two types of criminals in fan groups: leaders and followers. Leaders are protected because of their mob ties and have real power within their respective clubs, instigating and organizing criminal activity carried out by younger teenage fans, the followers. He said that these younger fans engaged in such activities because, "the fan's life becomes the club." Georgijev added that fan clubs had no real connections to political groups or parties and no real discernable political ideology. "Us vs. the World Mentality" -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Milan Popovic, an RTS television journalist, told us on October 15 that supporting the team and the fan club gave hooligans a purpose and fostered an "Us versus the World" mentality. Popovic said many of these fans actively protested against the Milosevic regime and that now they could not understand why the current government and the police would turn against them. They believed that their contributions in the 2000 protests helped to bring the current politicians to power and now felt betrayed. Like Georgijev, Popovic said that an estimated 40 to 50 criminal leaders used the clubs to carry out protection rackets and drug dealing. He said police and club management did nothing to stop these criminals because they were financially supported by "tycoons" and "political interests." Government Building Case Against Clubs -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Government officials, confirming for us the connection between the fan groups and criminal activity, said the government intended to counter their influence in the wake of Taton's death but offered little specifics. Tomo Zoric from the Serbian Republic Public Prosecutor's Office said that the government's efforts to ban several fan groups and prosecute hooligans was a first step to clean up the clubs. Deputy Prosecutor General Jovan Krstic told us on October 22 that he had asked the Serbian Constitutional Court to ban several football fan groups on the grounds that they were hate groups. He called several fan groups "homophobic, xenophobic, and ultra-nationalist" and added that they were a threat to the political and constitutional order of Serbia. He said many of these fan clubs were used by far right and ultra-nationalist political figures and that Serbia could not afford to have a reputation in the international community for "institutionalizing violence." He accused the club management's tolerance for such groups as "socially irresponsible." He added that the next steps would be to find evidence linking organized crime to fans and the football clubs, prosecuting these individuals and ultimately privatizing the Red Star and Partizan soccer clubs, eliminating their chaotic ownership situation. COMMENT -------------- ¶9. (SBU) While the government recognizes the link between sports club hooliganism and organized crime, it has not yet done enough to confront the problem. The government needs to address this problem if for no other reason than to improve Serbia's image abroad, which the country cannot afford to have tarnished if it wants to move closer to Europe. Without further concrete plans beyond its motion before the Constitutional Court to ban some hooligan groups, we believe that the government will not break the link between sports and organized crime anytime soon. BRUSH