Slaviša Kokeza, former president of the Football Association of Serbia (FSS) and a prominent member of the SNS, hired criminals to threaten and physically attack the celebrated football player Nemanja Vidić, according to messages he exchanged on the “Sky” application in 2020, which were obtained by KRIK.
The messages also reveal tensions between different factions within the SNS: the head of the FSS was in conflict with the president’s brother Andrej because, as he claims, he did not want to be “his errand boy,” but also that President Vučić met with Zvezda hooligans. At one of the meetings, as stated in the “Sky” correspondences, he showed Delije representative Stevan Sojić their conversations wiretapped by the police, KRIK states.
“Otherwise, Andrej (Vučić) can’t stand me because I don’t give a f*ck about him and I don’t fulfill his wishes. And because of that, he makes up stories and creates scandals around me to annoy (Aleksandar) Vučić so that he would ask me to resign,” is the message Kokeza sent to a Crvena Zvezda fan on the secure communication application “Sky” on November 20, 2020.
Kokeza, then the head of the Football Association of Serbia and one of the most powerful people in the ruling party, was angry. He believed that Andrej Vučić, the brother of the president of Serbia, was behind the letter sent to the media a few days earlier by the celebrated football player Nemanja Vidić.
In the letter, Vidić sharply criticized Kokeza and the FSS, considering them to blame for the failure of the national team, which had failed to qualify for the European Championship around those days.
Fearing that Vidić could replace him as president of the FSS, Kokeza planned to intimidate him and physically harm him, according to the “Sky” messages obtained by KRIK. For this, he hired serious criminals, as seen from the correspondence.
Hiding behind the nickname Federer, the surname of the famous tennis player, Kokeza corresponded on “Sky” with a dozen close people in 2020 and early 2021. Journalists failed to discover who all his interlocutors were, but it is clear from the content of the messages that among them were prominent Crvena Zvezda fans, people connected with criminals in Serbia and Italy, as well as individuals who have influence on domestic football from the shadows.
Nevertheless, analyzing the messages, KRIK journalists established that Kokeza, through associates, was in contact with the notorious Veljko Belivuk, Novi Sad hooligan and criminal Slobodan Milutinović Sniper, the brother of the murdered hooligan Velibor Dunjić, Rade Dunjić, while he corresponded directly with Igor Tapolčanji, who is connected to Darko Šarić’s group.
These messages show the brutality of politics and sports in Serbia. The former head of the FSS and a close associate of the president of Serbia, through intermediaries, demanded from members of criminal groups to track football players, to threaten them, and organize their beatings, and even to seek help from the Italian mafia.
On Vidić’s car, who was living in Milan, they placed a tracking device, and Kokeza asked for it to be conveyed to him that if he spoke out one more time, “he is going to the cemetery.”
The former president of the FSS corresponded via “Sky” in the style of a mafia boss: he issued orders and was quite well-versed in how to carry out violence without attracting public attention, as well as making it as difficult as possible to connect it to him.
“That must not happen at the same time (the beating of football players). There will be a fuss in the media. It has to be one by one,” Kokeza ordered one of his interlocutors.
On “Sky,” Kokeza and his associates also talked about how the president of Serbia is susceptible to pressure coming from Crvena Zvezda fans.
“(Vučić) would not go against your stance in his wildest dreams because he fears the stands for himself and for politics. That is the only thing he is afraid of,” the president of the FSS wrote to his fan interlocutor.
From Kokeza’s correspondences, it can be reconstructed which Zvezda fans the president of Serbia met with.
The greatest influence on Vučić was held, as claimed in the messages, by Stevan Sojić, a representative of Delije known for incidents, who also met with the president personally.
To one of the meetings, Sojić came with another fan named Peđa, and President Vučić, as it was later conveyed to Kokeza, even showed them their conversations wiretapped by the police. “The boss (Vučić) took out recordings of the wiretapped conversations between him and Sojić and him and Peđa,” it is stated in the messages.
The president of the FSS, the messages show, used Zvezda hooligans to discreetly lobby for him with the then club president Zvezdan Terzić, as well as with the president of Serbia.
Kokeza was also on good terms with the other side – Partizan fans. On “Sky,” it can be seen that the leader of the Principi group, Veljko Belivuk, guaranteed ahead of the protests in front of the FSS building in September 2020 that no one would touch Kokeza.
“No one will mention him as far as the fans are concerned (…) what’s more, I presented him as someone who must not be touched,” Belivuk wrote in a message sent to a close associate of Kokeza.
Through associates, Kokeza also received tips from the police, according to the “Sky” messages possessed by KRIK.
Although he worked intensively for three weeks on organizing the tracking, threats, and beatings of football players, Kokeza, as the messages reveal, gave up on the attack in early December 2020 without explanation.
Shortly after that, things went downhill for him: he came under fire from pro-regime tabloids that accused him of allegedly participating in wiretapping the president, and then he fled the country. To this day, however, he has not been charged with any criminal offense in Serbia.
Nemanja Vidić, to whom KRIK journalists showed part of the messages, says he is not surprised by what he read.
“I met Kokeza once, but I never had contact with him. But I knew who Kokeza was, I had absolutely no dilemma about who he was,” Vidić says, adding that the problem is that “a man who is a street thug” was appointed president of the association.
“When you put a street thug into a position, he looks at it from a street perspective, and then messages like these are not surprising at all. Intimidation, scaring, beating, maybe even more than that, are the methods. And essentially, I was saying that the system is no good.”
The celebrated football player also points out that it is worrying that no institution warned him that threats existed and that he was endangered.
“This is truly devastating, for society, for all of us. The greatest responsibility lies with the police, the judiciary, the prosecution, and the people who placed those people (like Kokeza) into positions and gave them the power to bring certain people into trouble just because they want football to be normal.”
KRIK journalists tried to contact Kokeza by calling his phone number, through lawyers, company directors, and relatives, but to this day, no answers to the questions asked have arrived.
Aleksandar and Andrej Vučić also did not respond to the questions sent to them by journalists.
Sojić in a short phone conversation refused to talk about what is mentioned in the messages.
“I do not want to comment on who spoke about what with whom via any application,” he told the KRIK journalist.
MORE TOPICS:
Source: Nova.rs; Photo: Printscreen X @n1srbija