When packages of cocaine started washing up on the beaches of the Black Sea last year, it made headlines around the world. Romanian police swiftly scrambled hundreds of officers in what they said was an unprecedented search for the seaborne drugs.

After reporters again caught his son in company of alleged members of a drug trafficking clan, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić hinted on Friday that journalists were painting a target on his son’s forehead but that he will fight with all the strength he has and “defeat their lies.”

Following a tip from a reader, a reporter from OCCRP’s Serbian partnerKRIK managed on Wednesday evening to take a photo of the son of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in company with organized crime figures, adding proof to previous allegations about Danilo Vučić’s connections with the underworld.

Serbian investigative outlet KRIK is facing a public smear campaign from the Serbian state which is trying to discredit parts of an investigation KRIK has published in collaboration with OCCRP earlier in  May on the long and violent history of two organized crime groups from Montenegro, the Council of Europe stated on Monday. 

An unusual drug smuggling effort from 2018 may soon get an epilogue after prosecutors in the Hungarian city of Csongrad raised charges this week against three men suspected of having tried to use a paraglider to deliver drugs from Serbia to Hungary.

Reacting to an investigation into criminal gangs, Serbian pro-government tabloids on Wednesday unleashed a barrage of coverage echoing statements from political leaders who accused journalists of targeting the president’s son on behalf of the opposition. 

The rivalry between the Škaljari and the Kavač clans, which originated on opposite sides of a single mountain on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast, has upended the criminal underworld in the region. Crime groups have aligned themselves with one or the other, and some politicians and police have picked sides too.

A controversial businessman known as ‘Serbian Al Capone’ and considered the region’s top narco-boss died in a Belgrade hospital on Sunday after suffering from respiratory complications caused by COVID-19, Serbian investigative outletKRIK reported.

Twitter decided on Thursday to delete some 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of several countries - including more than 8,000 to the one in Serbia - stressing that their activity violated Twitter’s policies in constituting a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation.”

A musician in jail on flawed evidence. A journalist arrested for reporting on poor conditions in a local medical center. Hundreds of ordinary citizens charged for breaking arbitrarily enforced isolation measures.

Journalists and political leaders on Wednesday criticized the Serbian government and said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made a “mockery” of an international anti-corruption conference by deporting Serbian investigative journalist Stevan Dojcinovic before he could speak.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is deeply concerned by yesterday's detention of Stevan Dojcinovic, a regional editor for OCCRP and founder of the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK) in Serbia, by local police upon arrival at Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Stevan Dojcinovic

Croatianpolice arrested on Wednesday 23 people, including police officials, suspected of being members of an organized crime group that forged documents. Media reports that the beneficiaries were members of two notorious mafia organizations from Serbia and Montenegro.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has ordered the country’s Military Security Agency (VBA) to open an investigation shortly after a video was released this week showing an alleged Russian spy bribing a Serbian identified as a “Serbian high-positioned agent,”Serbian media reported.

Italian military police have broken up an international organized crime group that has ransacked stolen archaeological artefacts worth US$ 7 million from southern Italy sites,Europol announced this week.

OCCRP Regional editor and editor-in-chief of Serbian investigative outlet KRIK, Stevan Dojčinović, accepted the prestigious Knight International Journalism Award at the International Center for Journalists’s Awards Dinner in Washington, DC last week. 

Serbianpolice arrested last week an Instagram star and her friend after officers found a significant amount of weapons and ammunition in their apartments in Novi Sad.

A newly revealed photo shows a Kosovar businessman and politician meeting with an alleged organized crime figure. Shortly afterwards, he unexpectedly joined Kosovo’s largest Serbian party in a governing coalition — earning him the post of foreign minister.

Serbian citizens have been paying on average 74 euro (US$81.6) in bribes last year, mostly to health workers, showed astudy the Serbian Prevention and Fight Against Corruption Project conducted among 1,000 citizens.

Hours after Serbian investigative outlet KRIK revealed that the brother of the country’s Finance Minister was using a car owned by two businessmen who regularly receive lucrative government contracts, a pro-regime tabloid accused a KRIK reporter of harassing the brother’s girlfriend and her baby.