Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09BELGRADE1266
2009-10-29 14:21:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Belgrade
Cable title:  

SERBIAN SOCCER FANS: HOOLIGANS OR GANGSTERS?

Tags:  ECON EINV KCOR KCRM KPRV PINR SNAR SR 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXYZ0008
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHBW #1266/01 3021459
ZNR UUUUU ZZH (CCY ADCE6CAD TOQ2421-695)
R 291421Z OCT 09 ZDS
FM AMEMBASSY BELGRADE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0333
INFO EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
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
-------

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