Serbia looks to soon have a new top spy/security chief in Tomislav Radovanovic, according to local press services, who would take the position abandoned by Aleksandar Vulin, the long-time security services head who was hit with sanctions by the US government over alleged ties to organized crime and Russia.
Radovanovic, who has previously served as head of the Belgrade police anti-terrorist/crisis unit; as the head of a special investigation unit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and who has had a long career in the police, will replace Vulin, according to the Vecernje Novosti daily.
Vulin, who was long a stalwart backer of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic—and who came to Vucic’s aid, arresting a number of organized crime figures when it appeared that Vucic had himself been targeted by a rebirth of the fabled Zemun organization—resigned from his position in order to prevent Vucic from being “blackmailed” by Western pressure prior to the upcoming Dec. 17 Parliamentary elections. .
The US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Vulin during the summer under a combination of accusations that ironically included links to organized crime and alleged “corrupt dealings [that] facilitate Russian malign activities in Serbia and the region,” according to a US Department of the Treasury press release dated July 11, 2023.
Photo of Aleksandar Vulin by mediaportal.vojvodina.gov.rs, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
