Biography
Svetlana Raznatovic known by her stage name Ceca is a Serbian turbo folk singer, and one of the most popular singers in Serbia and the Balkans. She started her career as a folk singer in 1988. Being one of the highest paid artists in the Serbian music industry, she pursues Serbian modern folk-pop: performing to various types of music, mainly Balkan/Southern European folk or plain pop with ethnographic elements. Due to her enormous popularity, fans sometimes refer to her as the Mother of Serbia.
Ceca was born Svetlana Velickovic in the village of Zitoradja, then part of Yugoslavia. She lived with her parents, father Slobodan and mother Mira, until 1991, when she eloped to Switzerland with her boyfriend at the age of 18. She has a sister named Lidija.
Svetlana lived at home until her move to Switzerland in 1991 at the age of eighteen. She dated Dejan "Saban" Marjanovic, a minor Belgrade gangster, who was murdered. She was then in a relationship with former "FK Borac" footballer and restaurateur Haro Samardzic.
While performing for the Serb Volunteer Guard (SDG), a paramilitary force also known as Arkan's Tigers, in Erdut on 11 October 1993 during the Croatian War, she met her husband, Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, a military commander who in addition to leading the said paramilitary force was one of the most influential criminal in the 1990s Belgrade. When the Party of Serbian Unity (SSJ) was formed, she was asked by Arkan to perform. He was married at the time, and the divorce that ended that marriage was finalized two months before their wedding. Arkan proposed to Ceca on 7 January 1995 and they married one month later on 19 February. Their wedding was broadcast on television, made headlines in newspapers, and was portrayed by Serbian media as a "Serbian fairytale." They had two children, a son Veljko in 1996 and daughter Anastasija in 1998. Ceca's parents, Mira and Slobodan were against the marriage of their daughter to a paramilitary member."
Arkan was shot on 15 January 2000 in a Belgrade hotel by four gunmen. Despite having been shot in the head, he remained alive for a brief period of time but died in Ceca's arms in the backseat of the car that was taking them to the emergency room. After fifteen months of mourning, she made her first public appearance in April 2001 in a television interview.
Reformist Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated on 12 March 2003, prompting Serbian authorities to launch Operation Sablja. Ceca's luxury Belgrade home was raided as part of the crackdown on the network of criminals and nationalists behind the assassination. The raid led to a thorough investigation. She was arrested on 17 March 2003 and charged with illegal possession of multiple firearms. Ceca was one of dozens of people detained in the crackdown and she spent three months in prison. She also claimed the firearms were brought to the house by her late husband.
In 2011, Raznatovic pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of euros from the transfers of players from the football club FK Obilic, which she inherited from her late husband, and again illegal possession of eleven weapons. Ceca had sold fifteen players of FK Obilic to several international football clubs (such as Fenerbahçe.) Serbian state prosecutors accused her of taking for personal use an illegal share in the sale of fifteen players. Ceca denied having been involved in any kind of illegal activities, saying that her late husband was responsible for FK Obilic and that the eleven illegally possessed weapons found in her home also belonged to him. Under a plea bargain, Raznatovic was ordered to spend eight months under house arrest, avoiding the maximum sentence that the charges against her carry 12 years in prison.
