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 
------- 
 
¶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is cumbersome and outdated.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