His comments came in the wake of media reports that his cabinet chief Branko Lazarević had business ties with Darko Šarić's crime group, suspected of attempting to smuggle over two tons of cocaine from South America to Europe.

“Everything that is mentioned in the media can be easily checked, and I have ordered an investigation,” he said.

Dačić said that senior officials of the police are checked out in detail by the Security Information Agency (BIA) related to criminal ties, and that if there were such ties, "they would be hard to hide or miss".

“The public will see in the coming days and months that Serbia is, at this moment, the regional leader in the fight against organized crime,” Dačić said.

He said that the investigation of Šarić’s groups is a state secret and called for the media to refrain from publishing information on the case that could disrupt the investigation.

“This gives people information that they might be under investigation, and it has already occurred that people like that have left the country after reading their names in the papers,” Dačić said, adding that Monday’s arrest of Šarić and two other persons came as they returned to the country.

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