In the three months of 2017, Serbia's arms manufacturers and sellers carried out over 80 transactions worth 13.6 million dollars, which the US Treasury noticed as suspicious, the Crime and Corruption Investigation Network (KRIK) cited the findings by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Bureau, FinCEN, dossier.

The documents include domestic state-owned companies, including Jugoimport, Krushik and Zastava Oruzje, as well as several private companies, including intermediaries in the arms sale, KRIK said.

The investigation by US banks and FinCEN resulted in the US Treasury sanctions against controversial Serbia’s arms dealer Slobodan Tesic and his company for bribing foreign officials to get jobs, the document obtained by KRIK said.

The Krusik’s director Vladan Lukic, told KRIK that at that time, the American banks closed their accounts. That was followed by the refusal of the American correspondent banks in Serbia to transfer money.

„They closed our accounts. We then looked for some other banks, other ways to get money for what we exported legally and with all the permits,“ Lukic said.

He added the problem was solved when Krusik’s bank found another bank through which the transaction was completed.

The FinCEN document contains details about the transactions, but not a clear explanation as to why these transactions are marked as suspicious.

But KRIK journalists found out that the most of the transactions from Serbia were done from the accounts that those companies had in Serbia’s AIK Bank or Srpska Banka.

They also discovered the money went through accounts in VTB Bank in Moscow.

Part of these transactions were payments to so-called consultants or „agents“ in the arms trade – people who help companies enter into lucrative contracts with governments in various countries.

Experts and people who have worked in the military industry say that this is a completely normal practice in the arms trade, especially in the East.

„Such practice, along with consultants, is usual in 90 percent of arms trade deals. It happens that governments directly make contracts, but it is more common to do it through consultants who are usually linked to the army,“ Aleksandar Milovanovic, a former employee of the security department of Jugoimport, said.