Dubrovnik City Councilor Viktorija Knežević sharply criticizes the fight against organized crime, claiming that only "pawns" are prosecuted while those who enabled them for years remain untouched.
While the public focuses on spectacular arrests and press conferences, Viktorija Knežević, a Dubrovnik city councilor from the Center party, warns that the real picture of the fight against organized crime in Croatia may not be what it seems. In a statement released on August 3, 2026, Knežević presented a series of sharp arguments about selective justice and the deep intertwining of crime with institutions.
Knežević believes the key question is who sits in the dock during major organized crime trials. "When we watch a major organized crime trial and only those we all immediately recognize as criminals are in the dock, with no one among them from the police, security system, judiciary, or politics who enabled them to operate for years, let's not applaud too soon," she said in a statement to Slobodna Dalmacija and Dubrovnik Insider. She added that perhaps "only pawns have been picked up to show that the state is doing something."
Her argument rests on the logic of scale: "Because two people can rob a kiosk without anyone else knowing. But twenty people cannot launder millions, buy properties, establish companies, obtain permits, and expand businesses for years without absolutely no one in the system seeing anything."
According to Knežević, the strength of organized crime lies in its network of relationships with legal structures. She described a chain of responsibility that remains invisible: "Someone tips off. Someone turns a blind eye. Someone doesn't check. Someone files the case away in a drawer. Someone in return gets a favor, a job, or money."
She also warned about the state's paradoxical attitude toward citizens. "For a wrong piece of paper, a small debt, a traffic violation, or an administrative triviality, the state can show all its strength. Fines, inspections, detentions, humiliation, and endless proving that you are not a criminal." In contrast, "toward people who turn millions, use other people's names, and know who to call, everything suddenly becomes complex, sensitive, and slow."
"It's easiest to show authority on an ordinary person because they have no money, influence, or protection; they can't fight back and have no one to call. State severity is trained on the weak without any risk."
Knežević particularly criticized a phenomenon she calls political victimization. "In clientelist systems, politicians who have run institutions for years often present themselves as the biggest fighters against crime. In a more extreme version, they also present themselves as its biggest victims."
Such a strategy, she claims, serves to divert attention from the key question: "Instead of asking how the criminal network was formed, how long it operated, who it did business with, and why institutions didn't stop it, the public is offered a spectacle of a politician single-handedly confronting dangerous forces."
For Knežević, the real test of success is not the number of arrests in front of cameras. "Organized crime is truly broken only when its money and assets are seized, its ties to legal businesses are severed, and those who protected it, warned it, or kept its doors open from within the system are prosecuted. Without that, maybe one crew has fallen. The system remains and can continue tomorrow with someone else."
She concluded her remarks with a definition of true state strength: "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 the person who knows no one and the person who knows everyone. Anything else is not a real fight against organized crime. It is a show of force against the weak and a display of impotence before the powerful."
