POZAREVAC - The son of Slobodan Milosevic was flying back and forth across the world in a desperate search for sanctuary yesterday.
Marko Milosevic, believed to be the richest gangster in Serbia, was turned away by China when he flew in from Moscow yesterday. He fled to Russia at the weekend,
after his father resigned as President.
In the town that used to be his home, there was little sympathy yesterday. "If he'd stayed he'd be dead. He would have been lynched," said Jankovic Mladjan, a young resident of Pozarevac. "He showed his true side by running away. If he had nothing to be afraid of why didn't he stay?"
A Hi-fi shop Marko owns on Pozarevac's main street lies in ruins, its windows smashed, the televisions and stereos gone. You can see similar sights around Serbia - in the ruins of one store Marko owned in Belgrade some one has spray-painted: "Go and complain to your father."
A high school drop-out, Marko was a rich man at 18. He built a massive business empire on hs father's name. Some of it - the electrical stores, the internet service provider, the discos - was legitimate. But it is said he also controlled cigarette smuggling throughout Serbia. The son of the President, he was believed to have been awarded lucrative Government contracts in a giant home-building scheme.
On the road to Pozarevac, people stand by the road selling petrol from tin cans. Fuel is in short supply in sanction-hit Serbia - and some say Marko controlled petrol smuggling too.
Everyone expected Slobodan Milosevic to flee Serbia after the revolution. But it was Marko and his family who rushed to the airport and fled to Moscow. It is thought his money fled with him. Misa Sovilj, a Belgrade resident, says he saw a convoy of Cypriot-registered cars hurriedly loading with documents and departing from one of Marko's businesses in the capital. Cyprus is reported to have frozen the Milosevic family's accounts.
In Pozarevac, most are glad to see the back of him. Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mira Markovic, grew up here, but in recent years it was Marko's private kingdom. It is a poor town, where most of the people scratch out a living at the local flea market. But, until last week, it was full of expensive black four-wheel-drives, with tinted windows, that locals used to keep their distance from. In a week, they have vanished.
As for Marko, he was heading back to Moscow yesterday. China, long regarded the Milosevic's safest bolthole, turned him away. Russian border guards say he will be allowed to stay in Russia. But there has been no word from the Russian Foreign Ministry. Things look black for Marko.
- INDEPENDENT
Herald Online feature: Revolution in Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
Serbian Ministry of Information
Serbian Radio - Free B92
Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement
POZAREVAC - The son of Slobodan Milosevic was flying back and forth across the world in a desperate search for sanctuary yesterday.
Marko Milosevic, believed to be the richest gangster in Serbia, was turned away by China when he flew in from Moscow yesterday. He fled to Russia at the weekend,
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