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Zoran Jaksic, another man from the “America” clan who is serving a sentence in Peru for drug trafficking, financed the excavation of an underground tunnel two years ago, which was supposed to help him escape from prison, the Peruvian police revealed yesterday. He planned the escape with another prisoner and built the tunnel together with the Sinaloa cartel.
Writes: Milica Vojinović
The tunnel discovered by the police was not completed. It was supposed to connect a house near the prison and the prison kitchen, but the excavation stopped after Zoran Jaksic was transferred to another prison. Jaksic was transferred after police revealed he planned to escape early last year.
Meanwhile, the police found the tunnel and determined that the main financier of its construction was precisely this Serbian criminal, otherwise one of the leaders of the powerful “group of America”. Jaksic did not embark on this unusual adventure on his own: he built the tunnel in cooperation with one of the most powerful Mexican criminal organizations, the Sinaloa cartel. It is interesting that the leader of this cartel, Joaquín Guzmán, better known as El Chapo, managed to escape from a prison in Mexico in 2015 with the help of an excavated tunnel.
A Mexican was supposed to escape through the tunnel with Jaksic, and the Sinaloa cartel hired people from Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela to dig the tunnel, Peruvian police announced.
At the time, Jaksic was in the Miguel Castro Castro prison in Lima, the capital of Peru. He was serving a 25-year prison sentence for organizing the smuggling of large quantities of cocaine, which he obtained from the “Golondrinas” (“Golondrina”), local drug traffickers. He was visited and interviewed in this prison by journalists from OCCRP / KRIK, which you can read at this link.
After it was revealed that he planned to escape in early 2019, Jaksic was transferred to maximum security prison for Piedras Gordas. His verdict was recently overturned and the case was returned for a new trial, and it was decided that he would be transferred to house arrest.
Operation „swallows“
Jaksic played a key role in the drug trade in Peru. The police did not know this until 2016, until in the investigation of “Golondrinas”, they did not find Jakšić who changed the operation of this store. His appearance in Peru led to the establishment of international connections and contacts that were necessary to sell Peruvian cocaine in the world.
Jaksic is known in Peru as a man with 40 false identities because he used at least the same number of false documents to go unnoticed, mostly fake passports from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For this reason, it was difficult for the police to identify and arrest him, and Jaksic’s appearance helped them, because of his stature he stood out in Peru. He was arrested in 2016 and convicted of drug trafficking.
Powerful “group of America”
He is one of the two key bosses of the most powerful and longest-running Balkan criminal group: “Grupo América”. This criminal organization has developed a drug trafficking network that operates on at least four continents. In addition, he has strong links with the intelligence services, mainly the Serbian agency BIA, from where the weapons were handed over to them and it was reported who from his group was giving information to the police. They are suspected of having connections in the United States as well, which is why the group got its name.
As KRIK discovered, more than five tons of cocaine belonging to one of the members of the “America group” was seized in various countries around the world, and murders were committed in connection with it.
The other head of this group is Mileta Miljanic, a US citizen born in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has an arrest warrant in Italy for not serving a sentence for drug trafficking, and there is an accusation against him in New York, also for cocaine smuggling, although the trial has never started.
Miljanic and Jaksic are close friends, but of different characters. In one of the conversations recorded while the two were being investigated by the Italian police, Miljanic is heard advising Jaksic.
“Zoran, please be careful, always stay behind. Don’t mess with shit, don’t take risks, we’ll never be hungry. If we go down (they go to jail), it’s over, then there’s still no life … the best job in the world, but if you’re in (in jail) and if you’re not in the front row, you’re done. “
Read more in our story Secrets of the “Group of America”: a clan with deep ties
