Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabic charged that a coup against Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic was being planned by a cabal of ruling party members, Interior Ministry officials and Serbian organized-crime groups. The conclusion was arrived at after an investigation of the wiretapping of Vucic.
In a press conference after a March 7 meeting of the Serbian National Security Council, Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said that the President and his family members had been illegally wiretapped 1,572 times. The minister specified that some high-placed Interior Ministry officials were involved and that the collected information was sent to the organized crime department of the Prosecutor’s Office.
“The wiretapping of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is an attempted coup,” Prime Minister Brnabic told the TV Pink broadcaster, reported Sputnik International. “I think this is a cabal of people at the security services, first of all, the Interior Ministry, as well as [the ruling] Serbian Progressive Party, to which I belong. This cabal also includes criminal organizations, mafia and some of the media in Serbia, as well as a part of the justice system, and, without a doubt, foreign [intelligence] agencies are involved. Their goal was to destabilize Serbia by removing Vucic, physically or otherwise,” the Prime Minister declared.
Milos Vucevic, the Deputy Chairman of the Serbian Progressive Party and mayor of Novi Sad, went so far as to tell journalists that the conspiracy against the President includes ministers, directors and other party functionaries.
The National Security Council meeting which preceded Interior Minister Vucic’s press conference dealt with the key issue of Kosovo and organized-crime gangs which the government has been cracking down on. The crisis of the pandemic was also discussed. The wiretapping case began last January and paralleled a major government campaign against Serbian organized-crime groups which led to arrests of 17 members of one organized-crime family. Moreover, with the new Biden Administration, Serbia has come under renewed pressure to recognize Kosovo as a country.
It should be remembered that Vucic collaborated closely with then-President Donald Trump on a peace-through-development approach to resolving the Kosovo-Serbian conflict.
