Court papers show how marijuana flowed across the North Macedonia-Serbia border declared as pillows, cakes and duvets.
Shortly after midnight on January 15 this year, a truck crossed from North Macedonia into Serbia. Several hours later, having crossed the length of the country, it caught fire near Serbia’s second city of Novi Sad.
According to paperwork, the truck was carrying textiles for export to Britain. In reality, it was stuffed with tonnes of marijuana; the smugglers set it on fire to cover their tracks.
Two weeks later, police seized five tonnes of marijuana in the village of Konjuh, near the central Serbian town of Krusevac.
According to plea bargains reached last week between prosecutors in North Macedonia and two of the smugglers, the January shipment was just one of five carried out between mid-2025 and early 2026.
More people are under investigation.also looking into the finances of three companies tied to Skopje-based Alfapharm Group, which allegedly served as a front for the drugs production
The case is the latest to raise questions about North Macedonia’s legal medicinal marijuana industry, legalised in 2016, and whether it is fuelling the smuggling. In recent years, 14 firms have lost their permits to grow medicinal marijuana for failing to comply with the law, the Health Ministry said.
The transport
On August 10, the Basic Criminal Court in Skopje sentenced two men, Dragan Stojanov and Aleksandar Ivanovski, to three-and-a-half and three years and eight months imprisonment respectively.
Both men had admitted their roles in transporting marijuana from North Macedonia to Serbia.
Ivanovski drove the trucks, while Stojanov admitted getting hold of some of the vehicles and driving alongside Ivanovski – who admitted when he signed his plea deal that he set the truck on fire.
Preparations for the January shipment began as early as November the previous year.
At that time, Alfapharm procured a total of 8,832 kilograms of dried cannabis flower from CBD Med Plant, based in the southwestern town of Strumica, North Macedonia.
According to the court verdict, this quantity was not intended for legal processing but had been contracted and financed in advance for unauthorised sale.
In December, employees at Alfapharm’s premises in North Macedonia’s capital Skopje spent almost two weeks packing the drugs into double vacuum packages of a kilogram each and loading cardboard boxes with ten packages each.
More than 200 boxes bore markings indicating the cannabis strains. Once the packing was completed, on December 15, the employees were sent on collective leave.
In early January, the drugs were loaded into several vehicles, driven some 60 km outside Skopje, and transferred to a truck. The truck had already passed customs and was supposedly carrying sealed textile goods.
The truck, followed by the other vehicles, crossed into Serbia shortly after midnight. It left the highway at 3.41 a.m. and stopped in Konjuh, where the drugs were unloaded. Some 100 kgs were sent on to Belgrade, where they were discovered by police and seized.
Five days later, police came for the rest. In the house and outbuildings in Konjuh, more than 4.9 tonnes of marijuana were found in hundreds of cardboard boxes.
Weight discrepancies
According to the court verdicts, the group participated in four more drug shipments: two in August 2025, one in late September and early October and one in November that same year.
In August, the truck left North Macedonia declared as an empty vehicle. Once it returned to North Macedonia, however, it was 1,220 kgs lighter – the exact weight of the Hulk Berry marijuana strain that had been delivered to Alfapharm the day before.
The next day, the truck left the country ostensibly carrying cakes, rolls and pastry sheets. Crossing the border, it was 640 kgs heavier than when it was originally weighed at customs.
On the third run, at the end of September and beginning of October 2025, pillows were the declared cargo. Again, it weighed half a tonne more at the border than at customs. The truck again stopped near Konjuh, this time for 20 minutes.
In November, it was duvets. Again, the truck weighed more than at customs and stopped at Konjuh. There is nothing in the verdict to explain why the contents of the truck were not checked in light of the discrepancies in weight.
The verdicts cite seven other suspects. One of them, identified by the initials G.I., is suspected of coordinating the transport and giving Stojanov 10,000 euros in cash on four separate occasions.
“He was, in a way, above Stojanov and Ivanovski,” said oneain, which routes to drive, and so on.”
Following the money
In Serbia, prosecutors last month filed charges against six persons: Aleksandar Mijajlovic as the alleged organiser, Alfapharm Group co-owners Ivan Dragnic and Robert Zivkovic, Nebojsa and Rade Spasojevic, on whose land in Konjuh the marijuana was found, and Uros Mladenovski, who is accused of distributing the drugs across Serbia.
Another Alfapharm co-owner, Predrag Brkovic, has been charged in North Macedonia.
InvestigationMed Plant, Lighting Lux, Green Life and Life Plant. BIRN previously reported that Mijajlovic had become co-owner of Green Life in 2018
The drugs seized in Serbia were found at premises belonging to a local official of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, Rade Spasojevic. He and two others are now in custody, suspected of the unauthorised production and distribution of narcotics.
On the night of the bust, Serbian Defence Minister Bratislav Gasic, himself from Krusevac, insisted that Spasojevic’s SNS connection did not mean that the ruling party was involved.
Source: balkaninsight.com
