The situation was somewhat unusual, but nothing suggested foul play. \u201cAlleged suicide,\u201d police wrote in their official report on the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seven years later, reporters from KRIK and OCCRP got a tip of their own. A source called to say that the dead man in Paraguay was, in fact, a Serbian drug smuggler who had vanished after a botched cocaine operation in South America 13 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.krik.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Antonio-Gerardo-Veber-Mendes.png\")
<\/a>Bo\u0161ko Nedi\u0107 was on the run in 2009, wanted in both Italy and Serbia for allegedly running the Italian cocaine smuggling operation for the accused drug kingpin Darko \u0160ari\u0107<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nedi\u0107 was last heard from in October that year in Argentina. He had traveled there on a forged Croatian passport as part of a team tasked with smuggling more than 2 tons of cocaine onto a yacht off the coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From there, it sailed to Uruguay, where it was supposed to meet a larger ship that would move it to Western Europe. But the operation was foiled by a joint investigation between U.S., Serbian, Argentinian, and Uruguayan authorities. The drugs were seized, but Nedi\u0107 managed to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost nothing has been heard of him since, although a witness told a Serbian court that Nedi\u0107 had fallen out of favor with \u0160ari\u0107, who suspected him of cooperating with police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u0160ari\u0107, but also others, came to the conclusion that Nedi\u0107 Bo\u0161ko works for the police, because on several occasions he got away while all others were arrested,\u201d the witness said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u0160ari\u0107 himself surrendered to Serbian authorities in 2014 and is now on trial for smuggling close to 6 tons of cocaine, and laundering his drug money. He is also under investigation for organizing a hit from prison on a former associate in South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reporters set out to determine if the dead man in Paraguay really was Bo\u0161ko Nedi\u0107. They obtained 11 photographs of the Serbian smuggler from Italian police who surveilled him in late 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n The two certainly looked very similar. However, the dead man had slightly thicker and darker hair than Nedi\u0107, whose nickname was \u201cYellow\u201d due to his pale coloring. This could be explained by the fact that hair transplants were popular among the Serbian gang, but it was hard to tell for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So reporters sent photographs of Nedi\u0107 and Antonio Weber to the Center for Visual Computing at the University of Bradford in the U.K. There, Professor Hassan Ugail led the development of a facial recognition algorithm that can compare faces with a very high degree of accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The algorithm was trained and tested using millions of photographs of faces, giving it the ability to detect similarities \u201cbeyond the capability of the human visual system,\u201d Ugail said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The analysis showed that Nedi\u0107 was very likely to be the man found dead in Paraguay. All of the pairs of photographs matched at 81 percent or above, with one pair as high as 85.7 percent. Anything above 75 percent is considered a strong match, according to Ugail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBased on the results, with a similarity index of above 75%, it is my professional conclusion that there is strong possibility that the identity of the images \u2026 analyzed are the same individual,\u201d Ugail wrote in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the analysis is correct, Ugail\u2019s algorithm has solved the mystery of what happened to one of \u0160ari\u0107\u2019s key lieutenants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the 2000s, \u0160ari\u0107\u2019s cartel smuggled massive quantities of cocaine from South America to Europe. Some of their biggest buyers were Italian mafia families, who bought it for around 35,000 euros a kilogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the head of the cartel\u2019s Italian operations, that made Nedi\u0107 an important figure. He reported directly to the second-in-command of the \u0160ari\u0107 gang, Goran Sokovi\u0107, and was the only person who had permission to enter the group\u2019s storage site in a house near Pisa, on Italy\u2019s Ligurian coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This house was raided by Italian police in 2009, but Nedi\u0107 managed to escape arrest and fled the country. That\u2019s when he made his way to Argentina, and was tasked with organizing the cocaine shipment out of Uruguay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The seizure of this cocaine was also a turning point for \u0160ari\u0107, who was catapulted from relative obscurity to international wanted lists. He went into hiding following the seizure, while Serbian prosecutors filed eight separate indictments, accusing him of smuggling nearly 6 tons of cocaine across the world and laundering 22 million euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He finally surrendered to Serbian authorities in 2014 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison the following year, but that verdict was later overruled and a retrial ordered. He was then sentenced yet again to 15 years in prison in 2018 and the decision was confirmed on appeal, but Serbia\u2019s Supreme Court ultimately overturned that ruling for procedural reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, \u0160ari\u0107 is in detention again \u2014 after being arrested in April for plotting the murder of a former associate from behind bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Serbian prosecutors suspect he ordered a hit on his former associate Milan Milovac in Ecuador in late 2020. They say he communicated with gang members on the outside using Sky ECC, an encrypted messaging app favored by Balkan organized crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After being shot several times by hitmen, Milovac survived and was hospitalized, but later died from his wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sari\u0107\u2019s lawyer, Dalibor Katan\u010devi\u0107, said the investigation into the alleged hit on Milovac was marred by procedural irregularities, and there was no evidence Saric had actually sent the messages.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>
\n
\nAccording to witness testimony heard in a Serbian court, Sari\u0107 had come to mistrust Nedi\u0107 because he escaped arrest in Italy when the group\u2019s cocaine was seized. The police officer in charge of the operation told KRIK that Nedi\u0107 was actually allowed to escape in the hopes he would lead police to some of the Italian organized crime groups that were buying his cocaine.\n
\n
\nA lot of customers, a lot of Italian groups [were] waiting for cocaine so I was curious to check how the organization was able to organize itself,\u201d said the officer, Luigi Rinella. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why we let Bosko free.\u201d\n
\n
\nPolice had been monitoring the house for some time, watching as cocaine came in from South America and Nedi\u0107 distributed it to buyers. On the day of the raid in January 2009, Nedi\u0107 had arrived at the villa and loaded cocaine into a car to be delivered to Albanian and Italian organized crime groups in Milan.\n
\n
\n\u201cWe decided to stop them after they left Pisa,\u201d Rinella said. \u201cOn the highway we stopped them and first of all we found the cocaine in the car, then we got into the villa and then we found cocaine in the villa.\u201d\n
\n
\nAll in all, 235 kilograms of cocaine were found in the house, according to Serbian court records, but Rinella said that was probably just a small fraction of what had moved through.\n
\n
\n\u201cThere were a lot of bags there,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sign that it was a very important place where they used to move a lot of cocaine.\u201d\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>