“I have never had any contact whatsoever, direct or indirect, with Mr. Šarić,” Lukšić said at a Sunday news conference. He added that he had never communicated with the accused drug lord. “If his face did not appear in the newspaper so much I would not even know who he is,” he added.
The foreign minister bemoaned the timing of the accusations. “I see this as an attempt to discredit me and Mr. Roćen as the minister of oreign affairs and European integration at a very important time for Montenegro, as we expect a decision about the opening of EU accession talks,” he told journalists.
The Montenegrin daily newspaper Dan (‘Day’) published a detailed list of phone calls Šarić made in 2008, which they say includes details linked to Lukšić and Roćen, among other high-level officials.
The prime minister said he is convinced that Dan had been given false information.
“An investigation needs to be carried out, because several laws have been violated, and Dan should help us discover the source of such information. That is the only way we would be able to give full information to the public,” said Lukšić.
The mobile phone company which supposedly gave the document to the police publicly denied the document’s authenticity.
“The form and content of the listing in question is not in line with Telenor’s practice of submitting telecommunication traffic data at the request of relevant authorities in accordance with Montenegro’s applicable legislation,” the company said in a news release.
Police authorities announced Sunday that the listings of intercepted telephone conversations were forged. Prosecutors are now investigating the origin of the documents, which Dan says it received in the mail.
“The police carried out measures and actions that have confirmed that the document, the listing, which was published in the daily Dan, and where the names of the prime minister and minister of foreign affairs are mentioned, is a crude forgery,” Assistant Director of Police Milan Tomić said in a statement.
Šarić was little known to the public until October 2009, when international police seized more than 2.7 tons of cocaine from a yacht off the Uruguayan coast as part of Operation “Balkan Warrior.”
Serbian authorities say Šarić led a powerful Balkan criminal organization, overseeing the purchase and shipment of cocaine from South America (Colombia-Argentina-Uruguay) through the Balkans, and then eventually to Italy and Slovenia and into Western Europe.
Šarić hails from the northern town of Pljevlja, along the Montenegrin border with Serbia, but holds Serbian citizenship. He has been indicted in Serbia, and a number of his assets have been seized, but he remains at large.
