![]() Ayeti was detained by police special forces and badly beaten. The killing was never solved.Īccording to the second theory, it was Sherifi who crossed Ayeti by allegedly telling the police that Ayeti was financing ethnic Albanian insurgents fighting government security forces in 2001. One has it that the Sherifi family, which went on to lead the Dukjandzik clan, believed the Ayetis – who became the Belanoca clan – were behind the shooting dead of Sherifi, whose body was found in a Skopje landfill in 2009, over a dispute over money. There are two competing theories as to why. Their two families collaborated for over a decade, in drugs, extortion, racketeering, and gambling, but relations turned sour. In the 90s, Sherifi teamed up with Xhelal Ayeti, aka Xheljo, to seize control of the drug smuggling business in Skopje and beyond. The current organised crime scene in Skopje traces its roots to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when fuel, cigarettes and all manner of contraband were smuggled through North Macedonia into Serbia, which was then under international sanctions.Īt the centre of it was Agim Sherifi, uncle of the slain Bajrami. North Macedonia’s interior ministry told BIRN it was working “in close cooperation” with Greek and Kosovo authorities to get to the bottom of the killings.Ī security source and another who has followed closely the activities of organised crime groups say the Belanoca and Dukjandzik clans have long been at odds following a period of close collaboration between the two powerful families behind them. Bajrami was killed on the spot while his associate, Sead Slezovic, was wounded. ‘Belanoca’ is the name used by Albanians for the village of Belanovce, some 25 kilometres north of Skopje close to the border with majority-Albanian Kosovo, while the Dukjandzik clan takes its name from an area of Skopje’s predominantly Albanian-populated Cair municipality.Ī source who has followed closely the activities of crime gangs in North Macedonia said the Belanoca clan has “some unfinished business” with the Dukjandzik group, “and they are now apparently in a war for control of the entire territory of Skopje”, sometimes with the recruitment of smaller gangs like Baron.Ī month after Daci was gunned down in Pristina, unidentified gunmen again came for another boss of the Dukjandzik clan, Orhan ‘Oki’ Bajrami, in a luxury apartment in the Greek coastal town of Hanioti. North Macedonia’s interior ministry has identified a total of 40 organised crime groups operating in the country, 22 of them involved in drugs smuggling. Killings in North Macedonia, Kosovo and Greece Some experts allege political interests are hampering the work of bringing them to justice. Now, the official told BIRN, “It’s turning into an all-out war between the clan bosses”. The Skopje underworld was once “relatively coherent”, said the official, with several gangs sharing in the spoils. “The criminal underworld in Skopje is currently restructuring and the outcome is still uncertain,” a high-ranking police official told BIRN, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Baron group, of which Daci was reportedly a member, was rumoured to have allied with the Belanoca clan. Reports and well-informed sources say the cause of the killings is a turf war between the Dukjandzik clan and a rival, Belanoca, notably over control of the smuggling routes for cocaine from Latin America heading to Western markets, and for cannabis moving north from Albania into Europe and east into Turkey. ![]() Daci was reportedly a member of another, smaller Skopje crime gang known as Baron. There, on June 15, a man believed to be Daci suffered a similar fate, riddled with bullets in the capital, Pristina. ![]() Their alleged killer, Blerim Daci, was placed under house arrest, but by the time a court ordered he be taken into custody, he had fled to neighbouring Kosovo. Krivanjeva, known as ‘Zhila’, was believed to have been a boss of the Skopje-based Dukjandzik crime clan, and Iseni was an associate.
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