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• The Montenegro Connection 

“My little cat … I’m going crazy without you …. You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think …. Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dusanka Pesic Jeknic, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Djukanovic, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica. Billions of people around the world had just hailed the New Millennium. Dusanka, nicknamed “Duska,” the beautiful 41-year-old widow of the late foreign minister of Montenegro, was alone, far from her country. And she spoke out freely about everything: love, tobacco, and crime.

Eight years after Jeknic’s loving conversation with her president, transcripts of her phone calls, wiretapped by the Italian police for 20 months, are attached to hundreds of thousands of court records filed by the prosecutor’s office in Bari, in southern Italy. Here, in the Apulia region’s capital, facing Montenegro across the Adriatic Sea, prosecutors Giuseppe Scelsi and Eugenia Pontassuglia have at last wrapped up their long-running investigation of Djukanovic, Jeknic, and six other Montenegrins and Serbs, as well as seven Italians allegedly tied to organized crime. Their indictment charged the group with, among other offenses, mafia association aimed at illicit trafficking of tobacco, a serious crime in Italy. The indictment and an accompanying 409-page report by Italy’s anti-mafia unit, the DIA, which have not before been made public, provide an extraordinary look inside what may be one of Europe’s biggest smuggling operations in recent years — a tale of corruption, murdered witnesses, and a billion dollars in money laundered through Swiss banks.

From 1994 to 2002, smugglers shipped up to one billion cigarettes a month from the Montenegrin port of Bar to the Italian city of Bari and nearby. . . .

At the center of this case is a hidden bit of history, say prosecutors, of how tobacco smuggling became a state enterprise in Montenegro . . .

Djukanovic is now prime minister of that “Tortuga.” Re-elected in March, he leads a country where for nearly 17 of the past 18 years he has served as either prime minister or president. And he is pushing hard for Montenegro to join the European Union, which is now considering the country’s membership. To that end Djukanovic counts on his main supporter, Italy’s premier Silvio Berlusconi, who in March lauded him during a state-visit in Podgorica. . . .

Affiliated with Serbia until 2006, Montenegro is now fully independent, but some EU nations, notably Belgium and Germany, remain skeptical that the country is ready to join the West. Djukanovic has said that the smuggling is a thing of the past . . .

Starting June 3, Bari Judge Rosa Calia Di Pinto will hold a preliminary hearing to decide whether or not the evidence gathered by prosecutors is enough to put the indicted on trial. The judge will hear a story of a “mafia war” stretching into 10 countries: not only Italy and Montenegro, but also Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Aruba, and the United States. So far, two key witnesses and five others mentioned in the case have been murdered.

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