In a statement dated August 3, 2026, Viktorija Knežević asserts that major trials are often just a 'show for the public,' with the key lying in prosecuting insiders within the system.
In a statement released on August 3, 2026, Viktorija Knežević, a city councilor, delivered a sharp critique of Croatia's fight against organized crime. According to her, operations that result in the arrests of only known criminals, without apprehending those within the system who enabled their activities, are nothing more than a 'show for the public.'
"When we watch a major organized crime trial and the defendants are only those we all immediately recognize as criminals, while among them there is no one from the police, security services, judiciary, or politics who allowed them to operate for years, let's not applaud too soon," Knežević said. "Perhaps only pawns have been picked up to show that the state is doing something."
Knežević cited her criminal law professor to explain the fundamental logic: while two people can rob a kiosk without anyone knowing, twenty people cannot launder millions, buy properties, establish companies, and obtain permits for years without someone in the system noticing.
"Someone tips off. Someone turns a blind eye. Someone fails to check. Someone files the case away in a drawer. Someone receives a favor, a job, or money in return," she listed. "Organized crime is not just a group of criminals. Its strength lies precisely in the connections it manages to establish with legal businesses and institutions."
Knežević points out that the absence of real prosecution of organized crime is regularly accompanied by two phenomena. The first is the "almost grotesque harshness" of the state apparatus toward ordinary citizens. For a wrong piece of paperwork, a small debt, or a traffic violation, the state shows all its force through fines, inspections, and detentions.
"Toward people who turn millions, use other people's names, and know whom to call, everything suddenly becomes complex, sensitive, and slow," she warned. The ordinary person, as she puts it, is the easiest target because they have no connections, no money, and no one to call. "On the weak, state severity is trained without any risk. That's how statistics are produced, the impression that institutions are working, and citizens' fear of the state apparatus."
In contrast, a serious criminal often does not fear the law, but only the possibility of losing the right person in the system who protects them.
The second phenomenon Knežević criticizes is the political exploitation of the fight against crime. In clientelistic systems, she claims, politicians who have managed institutions for years often present themselves as the greatest fighters against crime, and in a more extreme version, as its greatest victims.
"This gives them an aura of courage, and the question of their responsibility is replaced by a story of personal endangerment and heroism," she said. Instead of examining how the criminal network emerged and why institutions failed to stop it, the public is offered a spectacle of a brave politician standing alone against dangerous forces.
"Therefore, political victimization should not be automatically accepted as proof of someone's innocence, courage, or successful fight against crime. The real question is: what did you and the institutions you manage do while that crime was growing?"
Knežević emphasizes that organized crime is not dismantled when a few perpetrators or nominal owners are arrested in front of cameras. "It is dismantled when its money and assets are seized, its ties to legal businesses are severed, and those who protected it from within the system, warned it, or kept the doors open are prosecuted."
Without that, she concludes, perhaps one crew has fallen, but the system remains and can continue tomorrow with someone else. "A state is not strong when it can punish an ordinary person. Any state can do that. It is strong when the law applies equally to a person who knows no one and to a person who knows everyone. Anything else is not a real fight against organized crime."
