Former SNS activist claims Vučić's party paid 200 euros a day for people in Ćacilend, and that he picked up the cash at a public utility

Momčilo Marjanović (54) spent more than ten years as an activist for Aleksandar Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Now, in an interview with the investigative journalism network BIRN, he says the party organised and paid groups of thugs, bought votes and planted its people among students and protesters to provoke clashes with the police. These are his claims, not facts established in court - but they are detailed enough that they can't easily be swept under the rug.

He says he personally led groups of men who guarded party offices, took part in clashes with protesters and stayed in the so-called Ćacilend - the camp of Vučić supporters outside the Serbian Presidency building. For his stay there, he claims, he received 500 euros a day, and the men he led 200 euros each. He was paid in cash, in the office of the director of a Novi Sad public utility.

Batons, sprays and "a hundred" revolvers

After the collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad railway station on November 1, 2024, which killed 16 people and ignited mass protests, his tasks, he says, became increasingly violent. Before the big student protest in Belgrade on March 15, 2025, he spent more than two weeks in Ćacilend. In the tents, he says, batons, pepper sprays and balaclavas were waiting for them. "If it comes to a clash, we don't pick our means, we have everything we need. We go all the way, no mercy."

"As I walked around Ćacilend, I saw plenty of people with revolvers they didn't even hide. A hundred for sure," Marjanović claims. He adds that the police cooperated with the people in the camp, and that he heard a police officer telling them that if the police couldn't hold back the protesters, they would let a certain number of them in - so the groups in Ćacilend could beat them up and scare off the rest.

Provocateurs among the students

The gravest claim concerns infiltration. "We organised guys from other towns, whom the locals didn't know, to slip into their ranks. They then attacked the police with stones and pyrotechnics, so that the students would get the blame," he says. He admits not all the clashes were staged, but claims he personally helped organise provocations at protests in Belgrade, Bačka Palanka, Bački Petrovac and Novi Sad.

Up to 400,000 euros from the city heating company

The most specific accusations are aimed at Nenad Barac, director of the public utility Novosadska Toplana and an SNS member. Marjanović claims Barac personally gave him instructions, approved the number of people hired and paid out the money - in his office, and when the director wasn't there, the cash was waiting with his secretary. He estimates that since the canopy collapse he has collected between 350,000 and 400,000 euros from that company. According to the journalists, Marjanović also handed over correspondence with Barac as evidence. Barac refused to answer questions, asked where they had got their information and ended the conversation.

A company that is supposed to heat Novi Sad's flats - and out of it, if the claims are true, came cash for the people in Ćacilend. Marjanović also admits that for years he drew a salary from the Novi Sad municipal company Lisje without ever turning up for work. "Those are phantom jobs, that's what they call them. I'm not the only one, unfortunately," he says. On vote-buying: "It was usually 100 euros, and now I hear they're paying 400 or 500 euros a vote."

He says he fell out with the party when he helped two students who had entered Ćacilend and when he refused to go to Kula ahead of the local elections on March 29 this year. Then the threats began. He blames them on former MMA fighter and SNS activist Bojan Mihajlović and his associate Vladimir Zukić, and claims Zukić threatened to hurt his child. Both refused to answer questions and deny knowing him.

This is the testimony of a man who admits he took part himself - and that he enjoyed the perks: "I never queued at the doctor's." That's exactly why it carries weight. The question is whether any institution in Serbia will call him to repeat it under oath, ten days or so before the October 25 elections - or whether Belgrade will keep itself busy counting Croatian articles about Vučić.