Police face allegations of serious security breaches

A prosecutor in a high-profile trial of members of one of the most ruthless crime syndicates in the Balkans has caused a political storm in Slovenia by accusing the police unit responsible for protecting senior officials and those deemed at risk of gross misconduct, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

The Security and Protection Centre first came into public focus after it transpired that Mateja Gončin, one of the prosecutors in the trial of the Montenegrin criminal cartel known as the Kavač Clan, had rejected police protection because she no longer trusted them.

Speaking through her lawyer, the prosecutor provided fresh details at a current news show on TV Slovenija on 12 December, revealing that, instead of protecting her, the unit exposed her to risk and illegally collected information about her and the president of the National Assembly.

Incident involving informant

She revealed that when she and two Bosnian prosecutors met with an informant at the Bosnian embassy in Ljubljana in early January this year they were tailed by a suspicious vehicle. The informant was Satko Zovko, who was executed in a mafia-style murder in Ljubljana in late November.

The prosecutor immediately notified the leadership of the police force and the Security and Protection Centre of the risk, demanding an investigation, but said that nothing happened, and that even today the case remains uninvestigated.

A member of the prosecutor's security detail, who appeared on the show on condition of anonymity, said that no action had been taken in response to the incident. "If action had been taken at that time, the murder victim might still be alive," he said.

Police told TV Slovenija reporters that the circumstances of the incident had been checked but that the findings cannot be revealed because revealing classified information could put the life of a member of the police or a police associate at great risk.

Illegal collection of data

The prosecutor felt she was in danger but no action was taken. She believes the leadership of the Security and Protection Centre conducted illegal, unprofessional and criminal acts, which she reported to the relevant police bodies and a special department of the state prosecution in charge of investigating police officers.

She said the Security and Protection Centre took vengeance by dismissing her team of security guards and assigning her a new team, which she refused to accept, so she had been without protection for months. After the informant's murder she accepted protection again and she got her original team back.

The show learned that Gončin trusted her guards but accused their superiors of misconduct. Allegedly, there had been several attempts to hack her security staff's phones and the Security and Protection Centre allegedly created private electronic addresses to access the security cameras at her home.

The prosecutor also learned that she had a security guard planted into her team to collect information about her personal life, something that the security guard confirmed unofficially.

She said she had found out that members of the police unit in charge of protecting senior officials had collected information about other officials too. Allegedly, they collected information about private contacts and intimate life of National Assembly President Urška Klakočar Zupančič.

Her lawyer and the document she presented to the TV show revealed that the prosecutor had reported the alleged misconduct and held three meetings with Police Commissioner Senad Jušić to discuss it.

PM points finger at previous police chief

Neither Jušić nor Interior Minister Boštjan Poklukar participated in the show, but both later acknowledged that audits and internal security procedures determined some irregularities and shortcomings. But Jušić argued the prosecutor's claims contained "several untruths".

Poklukar ordered Jušić to conduct a "comprehensive reorganisation" of the Security and Protection Centre by 1 April.

While the opposition called on both Poklukar and Jušić to resign, Prime Minister Robert Golob pointed his finger at the former Interior Minister Tatjana Bobnar and former Police Commissioner Boštjan Lindav, saying he had been raising concern about the situation in the unit for two years.

"I will continue to raise this issue ... but sometimes, some bodies in this country do not want the legitimately elected government to interfere in their internal affairs, and they launch all possible procedures to prevent the elected government to address the irregularities," he said.

"Minister Bobnar did not want to tackle this and we parted ways. Today, she is my greatest adversary. I wonder why," he said, referring to her accusation as she resigned two years ago that Golob exerted undue pressure on her over staffing at the police force, an allegation now subject to a police investigation.

Through her lawyer Bobnar rejected Golob's accusations, noting that the police has been led for almost two years by the commissioner "appointed for a full term by the current government based on an illegal decision", and that the leadership of the centre has been changed twice in the meantime.

Lindav meanwhile rejected the claim that he had talked about the issue with Golob. "I've never discussed the situation at the Security and Protection Centre with Prime Minister Golob," he said in a written statement.

Golob established his own security detail on taking office in June 2022, with officers from the Security and Protection Centre coming to work directly for his office.

Audit lays blame at the door of security guards

Amid ongoing questions raised in the media about accountability following the prosecutor's revelations, Minister Poklukar declassified on 16 December the report of an audit of the Security and Protection Centre that he had ordered earlier this year.

Presenting the report to the press, Police and Security Directorate head Darijo Levačić, said it found leaking of information from top-level meetings of the Security and Protection Centre's leadership, as well as inadequate handling of classified information, among other things.

"It is worrying that a state prosecutor under protection received certain information so quickly, information that police employees should not have given her," he said, adding the audit found some of the protected officials had too close relationships with the officers who protected them.

The audit found there had been ground to replace the team in charge of protecting the prosecutor. It found professional errors, including in the handling of the incident involving a suspicious vehicle, but Levačić said it had not been established whether the vehicle "actually posed a threat".

Poklukar said the situation at the unit was the legacy of the previous minister and police commissioner, repeating that the Slovenian police were doing a good job and that his team would do everything in its power to improve the situation and restore trust in the Security and Protection Centre.

Police Commissioner Jušić stressed that despite all the criticism expressed in the media about the Security and Protection Centre there had been no security incidents that would have jeopardised the safety of protected persons.