Suspected drug lord pleads not guilty for money laundering

Prnjat was detained in prison in the Croatian city of Rijeka after being extradited from Slovenia where he was arrested on March 8 in a police operation which dismantled an international drug smuggling ring.

The operation led to the arrest of six Croatian, two Dutch and one Spanish national suspected of smuggling drugs from South America into Europe after the police had seized 100 kilograms of cocaine which arrived to the Rijeka seaport from Panama in a container ship carrying scrap metal.

The Croatian organised crime police unit, Uskok, had filed charges against him, his mother, and two sisters for using drug money to buy real estate in Croatia in 2007, after Prnjat had been arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, in another international police crackdown organised by Italy.

Prnjat was tried for drug trafficking in Italy and convicted to 10 years' in prison in a case which served as the main basis for the charges filed in Croatia. He was released from prison in 2016.

The Rijeka County Court judge dropped the charges against him in 2012 due to insufficient evidence, but the Supreme Court in Croatia overturned the verdict, and a re-trial began in 2017 in Zagreb.

"I was convicted in Italy for four separate episodes, and in two of those events no drugs were found," said Prnjat, who was dubbed in the Croatian media as the "Croatia's Escobar" in reference to the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, known as the "King of Cocaine".

"In the cases where drugs were found, there was no material benefit. And this is why I think this trial cannot be based on the trial in Italy," he added.

He also said that the real estate that Uskok is referring to as being contentious had not been bought with drug money, and that he had nothing to do with the real estate owned by his family members.

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