The Security-Intelligence Agency’s involvement in fighting organised crime can be diminished by implementing the intelligence-led policing in Serbia.

By Andrej Stefanović (BCSP)
@bezbednost_org

One of the questions in fighting organized crime is the involvement of security intelligence services: whether the services should have the police competencies in detecting and pursuing members of organised criminal groups. As there are no universal standards or recipes for this issue, countries around the world have implemented different mechanisms.

For example, there is no place for intelligence services in combatting organised crime in the United Kingdom. The specialized Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was formed in 2006 with the sole function of fighting serious and organised crime. The SOCA was replaced in 2013 with the National Crime Agency (NCA) with the same remit.

Contrary to the United Kingdom, the Security and Intelligence Service (PET) in Denmark is charged with combating organised crime through the use of undercover agents, technical measures, sources, and observations. The PET puts to use its capabilities and competences in assisting the local police services in their investigations and maintains intensive international police cooperation in combatting organised crime.

The Serbian system is somewhere in between these two.

Unclear Nature of the Security-Intelligence Agency

The Security-Intelligence Agency’s (BIA) role in fighting organized crime is unclear. Legally speaking, it is not explicitly tasked with fighting organised crime. However, the BIA does have an organizational unit with responsibilities of fighting organised crime and terrorism. There is the legislative obligation of cooperation between the police and the BIA in detecting and pursuing organised crime groups. Also, the members of BIA have police powers, including the power to arrest.

Still, the task of fighting organised crime in Serbia is given to a specialized body – the Department for Combating Organised Crime (SBPOK). SBPOK is not an independent agency, such as the NCA, but a unit within the Criminal Police Directorate of the Ministry of Interior. It was established by the Law on the Organisation and Jurisdiction of Government Authorities in Suppression of Organised Crime, Corruption and other particularly serious Crimes.

The whole institutional structure of combatting organised crime is complicated since BIA is actively involved even in criminal activities of smuggling cigarettes and tobacco, things that cannot be seriously regarded as threats to national security. In the last few years, the BIA has actively participated in detecting, pursuing and arresting members of organised criminal groups, both on its own and in cooperation with the police.

The BIA was one of the main actors in a long-running joint operation code-named “The Balkan Warrior” among the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and police in Uruguay and Argentina, when more than two tons of cocaine seized.

Based on the current legal and institutional framework, the BIA could be understood predominately as supportive and secondary in nature, mostly in respect to acquiring intelligence on the intention of criminal groups. However, the deeper problem is a dependency of the police on the BIA services in criminal investigations.

This problematic situation has been detected also by the European Commission in progress reports, stating that this situation is not in accordance with the best practices that can be found in Europe and internationally. More specifically, the Commission emphasized in the latest report that the Law on BIA should be reviewed, regarding the possibility of its involvement in criminal investigations.

Best practices referred to by the Commission are practices that have proven to be an adequate solution in regulating security intelligence services and their role in a state’s security affairs. Accordingly, the role of security services is to deal with threats to national security and not to tackle regular criminal offences. Therefore, the members of the security-intelligence services should not have police powers.

One can imagine that these measures of taking away the police powers from the BIA would be the first step in decreasing its role and influence in criminal procedures, which would allow for the SBPOK to assume its rightful role as the primary body for tackling organised crime.

The Intelligence-Led Policing

The potential decreasing of the BIA’s role in combatting organised crime ought to be followed with the full implementation of an intelligence-led policing (ILP) in the Criminal Police Directorate within the Ministry of Interior.

The ILP presupposes a pro-active approach where the law enforcement agency at hand prepares an investigation based on the assessment and management of risk, as the gathering of evidence is used not only as a foundation for building cases and indictments but also as a tool for gathering intelligence.

A system with a developed criminal intelligence mechanism can be found in the United Kingdom with the establishment of the NCA and the SOCA before it. The NCA’s core mission is stipulated in the Crime and Courts Act and entails fighting organised and serious crime through performing the criminal intelligence function of gathering, storing, processing, analysing and disseminating relevant information.

The introduction of ILP concept in Serbia is still at its pilot phase, with two projects that the Ministry of Interior is currently implementing in Kraljevo and Novi Sad. The Article 34 of the new Law on Police envisages that the police manage its affairs through using the police intelligence model, which presumes that investigations are led by criminal intelligence. However, this could be seen only as the beginning in reshaping the policing

The Action Plan for Chapter 24 in the EU accession negotiations will certainly be the backbone of this process. Within it, a significant number of activities, especially in the part relating to fighting organised crime, is dedicated to the initiation of the ILP, and they presuppose that changes are needed not only in regard to legislative adjustment but also functional and organizational reconfiguration.