Zemun Clan
| Founding location | Zemun, Belgrade, Serbia |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1990s–present |
| Territory | Zemun |
| Ethnicity | Serb |
| Membership (est.) | 2,000 members 10,000 foot-soldiers |
| Criminal activities | Arms trafficking, bribery, burglary, drug trafficking, embezzlement, extortion, fraud, Kidnapping, money laundering, murder, Racketeering, robbery and theft |
The Zemun Clan is one of the Belgrade clans of the Serbian Mafia. The name is based on the base of the clan located in Zemun, a municipality of Belgrade. The peak of the clan occurred from 2000 to 2003 and until today they were one of the most powerful organizations in Southeast Europe.
In 1992, the gang of "Peca" was arrested. One of the members was Dušan Spasojević, who would later become the head of the Zemun clan.
The clan grew in prominence after the downfall of Slobodan Milošević with an influx of many Red Berets paramilitaries, including Milorad Ulemek. These were people who had military training, wartime experience and connections with elements of the Serbian state secret service UDBA.
In September 2001, 700 kilos of heroin was found in a bank vault rented by the BIA in central Belgrade. The illegal safekeeping was never explained nor brought up.
In 2001, the Zemun clan organized "special training courses" with the BIA, lending them information on Kosovo Albanian insurgents in exchange.
During the period that started with the Yugoslav Wars and ended with the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in March 2003, connections between the Serbian Mafia and the government were obvious and corruption was rampant in most branches of the state, from border patrols to law-enforcement agencies. On 12 March 2003, Đinđić was assassinated by former Special Operations Unit member Zvezdan Jovanović. The government then set in motion a major operation against criminality during Operation Sabre, which led to more than 10,000 arrests. The revenue of New Belgrade malls, locations frequented by gangsters, plummeted by more than 20+% after the Operation. Milan Sarajlić, the Deputy State Prosecutor of Serbia, was arrested and confessed to being on the payroll of the Zemun clan. The Red Berets were dissolved on 23 March 2003.
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