In a troubling revelation from the heart of the Balkans, a major investigative report has exposed how organized crime syndicates systematically exploited institutional weaknesses in Bosnia and Herzegovina to forge identities and obtain legitimate passports. The scheme, detailed by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN), shows that dozens of violent criminals linked to the region’s most powerful gangs-namely the Kavač and Škaljari clans-used stolen identities, corrupt insiders, and systemic flaws to operate under false names for nearly a decade.

Between 2013 and 2022, at least 60 members of these criminal groups successfully obtained Bosnian passports under fraudulent identities. These documents enabled them to travel freely across international borders, evade law enforcement, and commit crimes under clean identities. Many of these identities belonged to unsuspecting Bosnian citizens, particularly those who had emigrated and never applied for local ID cards-making them ideal targets for identity theft.

These criminal actors relied not merely on forgery or counterfeit documents, but on an alarming level of insider support. With the help of corrupt police officers and civil servants, they accessed legitimate government databases and manipulated state records to obtain real identity documents based on stolen personal data from unsuspecting Bosnian citizens-typically individuals who had emigrated decades ago and never applied for updated identity papers. These victims were unaware that their names were being used to commit international crimes, while their lives were turned upside down when border alerts and criminal charges began appearing against them.

At the center of this scandal lies a uniquely vulnerable state infrastructure. Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country still governed under the complex arrangements established by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, is divided into two autonomous entities and one district-each with its own administrative structures and minimal inter-agency coordination. This fragmented governance model has made Bosnia’s institutions particularly susceptible to infiltration and exploitation by organized crime.

Bosnia’s vulnerability stems from its deeply fragmented and inefficient administrative framework, a legacy of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992–95 war. The country’s institutions often function in silos with minimal coordination, a weakness that has been readily exploited by organized crime.

At the center of this institutional dysfunction is the country’s central identity database, the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange (IDDEEA). According to an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation, criminal networks infiltrated this system through intermediaries who had unauthorized access. These insiders identified legitimate citizens-especially those who had left the country and never applied for ID cards-whose identities could be appropriated with minimal risk of detection due to the absence of biometric data, such as fingerprints.

The fraudulent process began with forged ID cards bearing the names of these citizens but featuring the criminals’ photographs. Using these counterfeit documents, the gangs would then acquire residency papers, citizenship certificates, and finally, authentic Bosnian passports-effectively fabricating a legal identity from the ground up.

The criminal operation was not the work of shadowy figures alone; it was sustained by a network of corrupt officials embedded within Bosnia’s institutions. One of the most notorious among them is Dalibor Ćurlik, a former police officer from Banja Luka, Bosnia’s second-largest city.

Ćurlik’s role in the passport scheme is both extensive and egregious. According to law enforcement records, he provided direct assistance to members of the Kavač clan, including Radoje Živković, a senior gang member implicated in a series of murders and drug trafficking operations across Europe.

In June 2021, Živković visited a police station in Banja Luka under the false name “Andrej Jović,” a real Bosnian citizen who had long since moved to Serbia. Despite the photograph on the ID card clearly being that of Živković, the application was processed without resistance-thanks to Ćurlik’s manipulation of the system. Ćurlik had even registered Živković at his mother’s address, a tactic he used repeatedly to create the illusion of legal residency.

Surveillance footage later obtained by journalists shows Živković being calmly fingerprinted and photographed at the police station. Weeks later, he departed Sarajevo with a genuine Bosnian passport, bound for Istanbul. Just over a year later, Živković was implicated in the assassination of Škaljari leader Jovan Vukotić in Istanbul’s Şişli district-a brutal hit that further intensified the violent feud between Montenegro’s rival gangs. Turkish authorities later arrested Živković and sentenced him to life imprisonment. In his possession at the time of arrest was the passport issued under his assumed Bosnian identity.

But Ćurlik’s involvement extended beyond just one case. He is believed to have helped at least four other criminal figures secure passports using the same fraudulent methods. In every case, he registered the applicants at his mother’s home, personally escorted them through the bureaucratic process, and collected their documents upon issuance. Among his other “clients” were Marko Petrović, a Serbian national with a record of violent offenses, and Almir Jahović, an Interpol-wanted Kavač operative charged with attempted murder. Jahović was arrested in the very act of receiving his passport-alongside Ćurlik himself.

While the Kavač syndicate exploited Banja Luka, their rivals-the Škaljari clan-operated a parallel passport fraud network out of Brčko, the autonomous district in northeastern Bosnia. Their operation was managed by Nikola Vein, a Serbian national who possessed his own forged Bosnian passport and acted as a fixer for at least a dozen Škaljari members.

Vein charged approximately 5,000 euros per passport, employing methods almost identical to those used by Ćurlik: stolen identities, fake residency documents, and the manipulation of Bosnia’s weak bureaucratic systems. One of Vein’s most infamous clients was Ratko Živković, a former Škaljari member who later switched allegiances to the Kavač clan. Živković’s passport was issued shortly before he was implicated in the assassination of Škaljari boss Alan Kožar on the Greek island of Corfu in 2020. He remains a fugitive to this day.

While criminals gained new lives and global mobility, the innocent victims of identity theft found themselves plunged into legal and personal chaos. Bosnian citizens living abroad were frequently stopped at borders, detained, and treated as suspects due to red notices issued by Interpol.

Predrag Đurđević, a Bosnian citizen residing in Serbia, was stunned to discover that his identity had been stolen. Police arrived at his farm demanding answers about a passport he had never applied for. Meanwhile, his cousin Đurađ Trivunović experienced even worse: detained at the Bosnia-Serbia border in August 2022 under suspicion of being a wanted criminal, he was held for hours in sweltering heat as his wife and child looked on helplessly. Though eventually released, he was flagged again just two days later upon re-entering Serbia. Trivunović was forced to hire legal counsel and obtain verification from Brčko’s criminal police to prove he was the real victim-not the perpetrator.

“It’s still not clear,” Trivunović said. “It still feels like I’m flagged.”

This scandal is not merely an example of bureaucratic mismanagement or petty corruption. It represents a serious national security crisis for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ability of organized crime syndicates to obtain legitimate travel documents through manipulation of state systems reveals deep systemic failures that go far beyond individual wrongdoing.

Criminal syndicates have successfully transformed Bosnia into a hub for transnational crime-leveraging its weak institutions, decentralized governance, and limited data protections to forge identities, move illicit goods, and evade justice. As long as Bosnia lacks a coordinated and secure identification system with biometric verification and robust oversight mechanisms, it remains vulnerable not only to identity theft but to international infiltration by some of the world’s most violent criminal organizations.

For Bosnia, the challenge now is urgent and existential. Without swift and comprehensive reform to its identification systems, law enforcement coordination, and anti-corruption frameworks, the state risks becoming a playground for gangs whose operations extend far beyond the Balkans-undermining regional security and tarnishing the country’s reputation on the global stage.

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