Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic | Photo by Beta

The journalists’ network for investigating crime and corruption, KRIK, released videos on Monday which they said showed Dacic meeting Radulovic while the politician was Minister of Interior.

Radulovic, also known as Misa Banana, was given a 12-and-a-half-year sentence in absentia for smuggling 5.7 tons of cocaine and is still on the run.

He considered to be a close associate of Darko Saric, who was jailed on July 13 for 20 years for smuggling cocaine from Latin America.

Dacic, the leader of the Socialists, the second strongest political party in Serbia, allegedly met Radulovic at a Belgrade restaurant between November 2008 and April 2009.

Commenting on the release of the videos, Dacic said on Monday that it was a “political and security game” aimed at compromising him.

Dacic said that Radulovic did not have a criminal record at the time the two of them met, as the charges against him were only filed in February 2011.

He also said that although he was under police protection for several years, nobody ever warned him that Radulovic was a suspected criminal.

“This is nothing new,” insisted Dacic, saying that the police, prosecutor’s office and courts had been aware of the material for some time.

“I guess seven years was enough for them to analyse what happened there,” he said.

Asked if this would endanger his position in the government, Dacic said it was a question for Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.

Vucic, who was visiting Germany on Monday, said he would comment on the videos when he returned home.

But Bojan Pajtic, leader of the Democratic Party, said that the release of the videos was a sign that elections are close.

However Vanja Vukic, a close associate of Dacic who can also allegedly be seen in the videos meeting Radulovic, said that the Democratic Party, which was the ruling party at the time they was shot, was behind the release of the footage.

“I do not want to comment on the footage because it is all clear. All this is done in the interest of a single political organisation and it is the Democratic Party. It had its own police officers, inspectors and investigations in order to blackmail its political opponents, coalition partners and even party colleagues,” said Vukic.

According to KRIK, during the period between 2008 and 2009, Radulovic met Dacic and other top police officials nine times. The videos were recorded by Serbian intelligence agency officers during the surveillance operation aimed at catching the cocaine-smuggling gang, KRIK claimed.

Claims about Dacic’s connection with Saric’s clan first emerged in 2013 and Dacic confirmed he had met Radulovic several times but said that he had no information at the time that Radulovic was a suspected criminal.

He then blamed the intelligence service and police officials for not warning him that Radulovic was under investigation.

Stevan Dojcinovic, editor of KRIK, told BIRN that the videos were hard to obtain and he decided to make them public as soon as he got them.

He added that was unclear what kind of consequences Dacic might face.

“I’m not sure what will happen next. Dacic was mentioned quite a few times over the years and still nothing happened. Now that new names have been revealed, like his deputy chief of office, Vanja Vukic, maybe something new will happen,” said Dojcinovic.

However he denied claims that the videos were released because Serbia could soon face early elections.

“I didn’t plan my timing. I released the videos the moment I got access to them. Every day is a bad day for someone in Serbia if you are about to release such important information,” Dojcinovic told BIRN.

Serbian Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic announced in August that there was the possibility of early elections.

Zlatko Nikolic, a Belgrade-based criminologist, said that the videos will attract the attention of the state prosecutor and the police, but that it is still too early say whether charges could follow.

“This will surely be unpleasant for everyone involved. I don’t think that any politician should be at meetings with such people,” Nikolic told BIRN.

He said that police need to investigate Dacic’s motives for meeting Radulovic but also how secret police videos came to be handed to journalists.