Leaked Messages Reveal Former Serbian Football Chief Discussed Violently Intimidating Manchester United Legend Nemanja Vidić

After Serbia failed to qualify for the European Football Championship in November 2020, former national team defender and Manchester United captain Nemanja Vidić publicly condemned the state of the country’s football association, describing a corrupt system in which executives and agents were profiting at the expense of the sport itself. 

Behind the scenes, Serbia’s football chief feared the celebrated footballer might be coming for his job — and began discussing a vicious response.

Encrypted messages obtained by OCCRP and KRIK show a chat account that law enforcement identified as used by Slaviša Kokeza, then-head of the Football Association of Serbia (FSS), sought to silence Vidić with the help of contacts connected to Serbian criminals and football hooligans. 

The messages detail an apparent plot to threaten Vidić, pressure him to stay out of football politics, and physically attack other former national team players who had supported him.

The conversations — whose details support the conclusion that Kokeza was behind the account — took place over the now defunct platform Sky ECC, which was broken into by European police in 2021.

Reporters could not confirm all of the identities of Kokeza's interlocutors, but the conversations indicate they included prominent supporters of the football team Red Star Belgrade and people with ties to criminal figures in Serbia.

The messages also provide insights into the complex interplay between Serbian football, organized crime, and politics — three forces whose entanglement has a long and bloody history in the Balkan country. 

Before becoming FSS president, Kokeza was widely reported to be a senior figure in the ruling party led by Serbia’s powerful president Aleksandar Vučić, and was seen as one of the president’s trusted allies.

In a text message discussing the threat he wanted to convey to Vidić, Kokeza wrote that the retired player should be told to “stay away from the association or he will end up in a ditch,” and that if he spoke out again or refused to abandon any ambitions to lead the FSS, he would be “going to the cemetery.” He also urged one contact to threaten to kill the former player’s family if he tried to take Kokeza’s place. 

In another conversation, Kokeza asked someone whom he referred to in Serbian as “kum” — a term that can refer to a godfather or best man, and is often used for close friends in Serbia — to find people in Milan, where Vidić was living at the time, to intimidate the former player. The contact told him he knew “serious guys” there, and later reported that they had successfully “put a tracker on his car. In Milan.”

“We need to give some money, if possible, for them to physically threaten him, to scare him that they could kill him,” Kokeza wrote. 

His interlocutor responded: “Pressure him so he gets scared and stops talking shit. So he never interferes with the association again.”

While the messages do not indicate that the attacks were carried out, they show the plans reached an advanced stage. 

On December 1, 2020, Kokeza’s “kum” informed him that several intended targets had been located and asked for the football chief’s permission to begin.

Kokeza told him to wait.

“It must not happen at the same time,” he wrote. “There will be an uproar in the media. It has to be one by one.”

Then, on December 7, 2020, Kokeza told him to suspend the operation until they could meet in person. Several months later, Kokeza resigned from his post. 

When shown the encrypted chat transcripts by reporters, Vidić said he had been unaware of the apparent plot to intimidate him and had never been warned by Serbian authorities.

“This is devastating — for society, for all of us,” he said. “The greatest responsibility lies with the police, the judiciary, the prosecution, and the people who put individuals like that in positions of power.”

Kokeza didn’t answer questions sent to him by reporters. When reached for comment, Serbian prosecutors said Kokeza had never been the subject of an investigation, and declined to provide further details. 

The FSS and a media advisor for President Vučić did not respond to requests to comment. 

‘They Could Lose Their Heads’

The open letter that Vidić published on November 19, 2020 accused the FSS leadership of oversight and integrity failures that had led to sporting losses and growing public distrust in Serbian football.

He went further, adding that the “rotten system” had allowed people with “questionable backgrounds” to make enormous amounts of money.

The letter was widely reported in Serbian media and prompted several former national team players, including Nemanja Matić and Danko Lazović, to voice support for Vidić.

The Sky chats show these reactions, and the press they generated, enraged Kokeza, who had served as FSS president since 2016.

Under the alias “Federer,” Kokeza immediately began discussing the problem with several contacts on Sky ECC.  He said he wanted Vidić to publicly state that he had no interest in becoming FSS president. He also wanted other players to retract their support.

“Right now, what I need most is help eliminating Vidić, Lazović, and Matić,” he told one interlocutor.

Kokeza suggested that the pressure be delivered through people close to Vidić, including former footballers Mihajlo Pjanović and Nenad Lalatović, whom Kokeza described as Vidić’s close friends. 

One of Kokeza’s contacts also proposed involving Slobodan Milutinović, a convicted Serbian criminal and notorious football hooligan known as “Sniper.” 

According to Serbia's Ministry of Justice, authorities are currently awaiting Milutinović's extradition from Spain, where he was reportedly arrested in 2024 after escaping house arrest back home over allegations of abusing an ex-girlfriend. Reporters were unable to confirm the status of his case or reach him for comment. 

There is no evidence in the chats that players Pjanović and Lalatović were ever contacted or pressured, and neither agreed to comment for this story.

The chats also do not confirm whether Milutinović was ultimately contacted, though they do show that Kokeza gave detailed instructions for the threat he wanted to convey.

In addition to persuading Vidić to abandon any political ambitions at the FSS, the goal was to “make sure Lazović and Lalatović get scared and understand they could lose their heads,” Kokeza wrote.

In a different exchange with the man that Kokeza referred to as "kum," the pair discussed arranging an encounter with Lazović and Dragan Mrđa — another former Serbian international who had voiced support for Vidić.

“I think at least one of these two needs to be beaten,” Kokeza’s friend wrote.  

Kokeza insisted that both should be attacked, but warned his friend not to take part personally.

A few days later, the friend reported progress.

“Vida located, Lazović located, only Mrđa left,” he wrote, using a nickname for Vidić. “Help with some information so the attack can begin.”

Lazović, Mrđa, and Matić did not respond to requests to comment. 

Looking For 'Serious Guys' in Milan

With Vidić living in Italy, Kokeza also explored the possibility of hiring local men to “hurt” the footballer. 

One contact told him he had found Calabrians living in Milan.

“Are they street guys, or are they considered mafia there?” Kokeza asked. “In the sense that people know they are mafia.”

“Serious guys, he says,” the contact responded.

The messages do not establish who these men were or whether they ever took steps to intimidate Vidić as planned. They do, however, show that Kokeza repeatedly sought to involve people who could frighten the former footballer and even carry out serious violence.

Vidić told KRIK he received no direct threats at the time, although several acquaintances advised him to be careful because of Kokeza’s reputation.

He said he had met Kokeza only once and never had any further contact. 

Vidić maintained that his public criticism was self-motivated and that he had not been put up to it by anyone, and said he had no ambition at the time to take over the FSS.

“I was saying that the system was bad,” he said. “We have to put credible people in place so that these institutions themselves have credibility.”

Hooligans and Political Influence

Kokeza's conversations over Sky ECC also provide a glimpse into how he viewed the relationship between Serbian football hooligans and political power.

Dating back to the 1990s wars that broke up Yugoslavia, Serbian leaders have long used football stadiums as places to recruit militia members or whip up nationalist fervor for political ends.  

Since then, hooligans have been viewed as an influential political force.

Under the leadership of President Vučić, who has been in power for 14 years, Serbian authorities have been accused by reporters and rights groups of offering hooligans a certain level of protection in exchange for the ability to use them as “muscle” to intimidate protesters and other government critics. 

The Sky messages show how Kokeza — who had become paranoid about his status in the wake of Vidić’s criticism — sought to mobilize supporters of Red Star Belgrade to protect his position.

The chats indicate Kokeza believed he controlled enough votes inside the FSS to survive any internal challenge. The real danger, he wrote, was that President Vučić might ask him to resign.

“Nobody in football circles or in the association’s assembly can remove me,” Kokeza told an apparent Red Star supporter who used the Sky alias “Tropez.” “But I have a problem if Vučić asks me to step down.”

Kokeza suspected that the president’s brother, Andrej Vučić, was trying to turn the president against him.

“Andrej can’t stand me because I don’t give a fuck about him and don’t fulfill his wishes,” Kokeza wrote. “I’m not his lackey.”  

Andrej Vučić did not respond to phone calls or questions sent to him by reporters. 

Kokeza believed that Red Star supporters could influence the president, who has spoken frequently about his lifelong allegiance to the club.

“He won’t go against your position because he is afraid of the stands, for his own sake and for political reasons,” Kokeza told the supporter. “That is the only thing he is afraid of.”

Kokeza asked the man to discreetly lobby senior Red Star official Zvezdan Terzić and other influential supporters against changes at the FSS, while ensuring that their relationship remained secret.

The supporter later told Kokeza he had spoken with Terzić and conveyed the view that there was no reason for others to back a change in leadership.

Terzić agreed, the supporter said, but added that “the boss decides everything."

Terzić did not respond to requests to comment. 

Kokeza's Downfall

A few months after the conversations, Kokeza’s star began to fall. 

In early 2021, pro-government tabloids began running a campaign against the football chief, accusing him of corruption and connections with organized crime. In Serbia, this kind of shift typically signals a loss of backing from President Vučić.

The tabloids linked Kokeza to Veljko Belivuk, the alleged leader of a football hooligan group and murderous criminal gang. 

Belivuk and alleged members of his gang are currently on trial for several brutal murders committed in a house on the outskirts of Belgrade that became known as the “slaughterhouse.”

The Sky messages obtained by reporters show that at least two of Kokeza’s contacts were in communication with Belivuk and another alleged leader of his group. One of the same men from whom Kokeza sought help against Vidić had communicated with Belivuk over football supporter affairs, the chat logs indicate. 

Kokeza was questioned by police in February 2021, but was not charged with any crime. It’s not known what he was questioned over, but he resigned as FSS president the following month and withdrew from public life.

According to media reports, the former football president left Serbia in 2021 and initially moved to the United States before relocating to Bosnia and Herzegovina this May. A source with direct knowledge of his movements, who was not authorized to speak on the record, confirmed to KRIK this was accurate.

For Vidić, the most disturbing aspect of the messages is that he learned about the danger he faced from journalists instead of the institutions responsible for protecting him.

“Who will be responsible if something happens to me tomorrow?” he said. “Perhaps my life is still in danger. Perhaps Kokeza is still angry with me.”

“This is a police state, and nothing can happen unless the institutions turn their heads away,” he added. “I would like someone from the state institutions to tell me whether my security is still at risk.”