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According to the testimony of the first defendant, the trial for the production and commercialization of 1.6 tons of marijuana continues
Predrag Koluvija, who is on trial on suspicion of being the head of a criminal organization that produced and traded 1.6 tons of cannabis, presented his defense to a panel of the Special Department of the Belgrade High Court, accusing the police of producing Jovanjica after her arrest. marijuana to falsify evidence.
Photo: (1.) MUP / Plantaža (2.) Predrag kolovija / YouTube / Rtv Stara Pazova (3.) Beta / Dragan GojićAnalyzing the photos in the case file, Coluvia claimed that it was clear from them that after the arrest of him and his associates, the police continued production, replacing industrial hemp with Indian hemp, which contains a significantly higher proportion of THC.
– They continued working the entire time and photographed him, which practically documented his own crime. You can see from their evidence that they were misled. They left so much evidence in the file that I was able to talk about it for days, Coluvia said, adding that this attitude of indifference towards falsifying evidence scares him a bit, because “they didn’t even try to hide the evidence.”
As further proof of this claim, Koluvija cited the electricity bills in Jovanjica, which did not decrease even after his arrest, and the economic asset near Stara Pazova was sealed.
– The invoice for November 2019 amounted to 1,550,000 dinars. The following month, when we were in custody, the bill rose to 1,850,000 dinars. It was only in March, four months after our arrest, that they received plants with a high proportion of THC, Coluvia said, noting that he did not want to accuse all the police of his claim.
Following that argument, the owner of the Jovanjica plantation noted that “someone had a nice idea” of industrial hemp, which the police confiscated on the property, and which he presented legally until his arrest.
“In Austria, for example, you can get up to four thousand euros for one gram of industrial hemp. Even if they didn’t sell at that price, they could earn 1,200,000 euros for just two greenhouses, “says Koluvija.
In his presentation, the first defendant also referred to the expertise of his phones, from which the prosecution extracts key evidence that it is an organized criminal group, claiming that the process was full of illegal actions from entering to deleting emails .
– I had access to two email accounts on the phone. In one, all emails were deleted between November 6 and 14, 2019. On the other hand, all emails were deleted, more than 10,000, said Koluvija, who indicated that he filed a criminal complaint for embezzlement during the expert examination of the phone, but never acted upon.
He reiterated that he was on the dock to thwart his business success.
– Before the arrest, I was a promising businessman, and now I have been bankrupt. And all for someone to achieve their business goals. If someone from the enemy nations did that, I could still understand it, but the most difficult thing for me is that the members of my people did it, he said.
After his presentation, Koluvija indicated that he would not respond to the questions of the Deputy Prosecutor for Organized Crime Sasa Drecun, claiming that he had betrayed his trust, that he had presented an accusation before the media before the trial, but also insulted him and his defense attorneys.
Politics in the courtroom
The President of the Trial Chamber, Zoran Ganić, repeatedly warned Predrag Koluvija to stick to the case, not to carry out the trial in the media and not to drag politics into the courtroom.
At the beginning of today’s presentation, Koluvija said that he had read the media reports of yesterday’s trial and that the majority reported that the police forced him to sign that he was cooperating with the brother of Serbian President Andrej Vučić and the businessman from Kosovo Zvonko Veselinović.
“Nobody forced me, but they offered it to me and I refused,” Koluvija said.
At the end of his defense, Koluvija returned to the media, assuring that everyone put emphasis on Andrej Vučić, although they did not know him and “he is the least important here”.
He also said that Acting Deputy Prosecutor Sasa Drecun hired People’s Party Vice President Miroslav Aleksic to speak publicly about the case, which he is not allowed in the courtroom, after which Judge Ganic interrupted him.
“Politics will not move into this courtroom while I sit in this chair,” said the presiding judge.
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