Who Is Olivera Ćirković

Olivera Ćirković (née Vasić, born in Belgrade on 3 September 1969) is a Serbian author and painter, a former professional basketball player and a former sports director of the women’s basketball club Crvena zvezda. She is best known as a former member of the international criminal network called the “Pink Panthers”, for which she was convicted and served prison time in Greece.

The public also remembers her for escaping from an Athens prison in July 2012. After her release she wrote the autobiographical books “Ja, Pink Panter” (“Me, the Pink Panther”), and her life story attracted the attention of film and television producers. This text follows her life on the basis of publicly available sources, and parts that come from her books and interviews are clearly marked as her own claims.

Early Life and Childhood

Olivera Vasić was born on 3 September 1969 in Belgrade, then the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. According to what she said in an interview, she grew up in a happy family, which, as she pointed out herself, is unusual for people who later end up in crime. Information about her parents is not publicly known.

Because of her height of 193 centimeters, she turned to basketball early. Sport became her first major challenge and, at the same time, her path abroad. She later took her husband’s surname, so sports databases list her as Olivera Vasić, while the media refer to her as Olivera Ćirković.

Early Career

She began her basketball career in 1986 with the Belgrade clubs Voždovac and Crvena zvezda. She played as a power forward and center. She then moved to Jedinstvo from Tuzla, where she stayed until 1992.

This period matters because she gained experience in a strong league of the former Yugoslavia at a club in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The breakup of the country in 1992 changed the course of many sports careers, hers included.

National Team Career

Olivera Ćirković was a member of the Yugoslav junior women’s national team that won the bronze medal at the 1988 European Championship. Nina Bjedov, Danira Nakić, Eleonora Wild and Danijela Ilić also played in that generation. According to FIBA data, she averaged 1.5 points over two tournament games.

Because of this period, the media often describe her as a former Yugoslav national team player. I was unable to confirm her appearances for the senior national team from multiple sources, so I do not state it.

Career in Greece and Slovenia

From 1992 to 1998, Olivera Ćirković played in Athens for the club Pagrati (Pangrati). Greece then became her second home, and she stayed there after her sports career. She then spent one season, 1998–1999, with Celje in Slovenia.

In the 1999–2000 season she played again for Crvena zvezda, which rounded off her playing career. After she stopped playing, she worked as the club’s sports director. Of her earlier years in Greece, the media wrote that she “first played there and then organized robberies”, which opens the least known part of her biography.

Entering the World of Crime

According to her own claims, the path into crime did not happen overnight but step by step. In an interview with tportal she explained that she lived with her then husband, a petty criminal, through whom she came into contact with that milieu. She describes herself as a rebellious person who does not accept authority.

She started by smuggling clothes, and then, as she says, luxury watch and jewelry stores followed. In the interview she stressed that she was not the perpetrator but the organizer. Wikipedia describes her as the mastermind of a team that robbed jewelry stores in Greece.

The Pink Panthers

The Pink Panthers is an informal name for an international network of jewelry thieves, with many members from the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The first robbery attributed to them took place at the London jeweler Graff on 2 May 2002. They got their name when British detectives found a diamond ring hidden in a jar of face cream, similar to a scene from the film “The Pink Panther”.

Police attributed more than a hundred robberies around the world to the network. Radovan Jelušić, arrested in Rome in 2010, was labeled as one of its key figures. In the media, Olivera Ćirković is named as the woman who held a leading role in the network in Greece, although by her own account she was never the one who physically carried out a robbery.

First Arrest

She was first arrested in 2006 on Crete as the organizer of a jewelry store robbery. According to Večernje novosti, she spent two and a half years in prison. She was released in 2008 but, by her own words, did not leave the criminal life.

By her own account, she began the most lucrative jobs only then. Until her next arrest she worked with the same team of people. This period shows how the reputation she had as an athlete later became part of the media image of her.

Escape from the Athens Prison

She was arrested again in March 2012 in Athens. Only a few months later, on 12 July 2012, she escaped from a prison in Athens, according to the producers from the Korydallos prison, and, according to the same sources, became the only person to have managed it.

In an interview with tportal, Olivera Ćirković explained that it helped that she painted in prison and decorated its walls. According to her description, she had privileged prisoner status, asked a guard to let her go to the fence for spray paints supposedly brought by a cousin, and a friend with two motorcycles was waiting outside. She says the escape was not like in a film, but required cunning and help from outside.

Greek media followed the escape as major news, and the Serbian paper Kurir wrote that it entered the annals of Greek justice.

Re-arrest and Sentence

After the escape she returned to Serbia, but later planned a robbery in Athens again. That robbery was carried out on 26 November 2012. She was arrested on 29 November of the same year and sentenced to a total of 32 years in Korydallos prison, according to Wikipedia.

In a later proceeding some counts of the indictment were dismissed, and because of a general amnesty in 2017, as the same source states, she spent about five years in prison. The sources differ: an interview from 2018 mentions seven and a half years served, while the series producers and the daily Danas state eight years. In the same interview she said that an arrest warrant in Greece remains in force because of the escape.

Return to Belgrade

After leaving prison in 2018 she settled in Belgrade. In November 2018 she said she had been living a civilian life for eight months and was “taking her first steps like a small child”. She took up painting, writing and training.

On social media she regularly posts photos from her workouts, and by her own description she paints realistically and considers herself a perfectionist for detail. She does not see herself as a novelist but as the author of a biography conceived as a trilogy.

Books by Olivera Ćirković

She described her life in a series of autobiographical books. According to Wikipedia and the publishers, they are:

• “Ja, Pink Panter: Ispovest” (2018), with an earlier title, “Pink Panter – Moja zatvorska ispovest”, listed in the sources with the year 2016, so the years differ
• “Ja, Pink Panter 2 – Arhondisa” (2019)
• “Ja, Pink Panter 3 – Povratak” (2021)

She presented the first book in November 2018 at the Interliber book fair in Zagreb, where, as tportal noted, she drew great interest from the public. She said she does not want to glorify crime but to awaken a “mild rebellion” in readers.

The Series and Documentary About Olivera Ćirković

A scripted series based on her book “Ja, Pink Panter” is being produced by United Media together with Dragan Bjelogrlić’s company Cobra film. The screenplay is written by Vuk Ršumović. Filming is planned in Greece, on the islands of Corfu, Crete and Mykonos, as well as in Istanbul and Belgrade.

Bjelogrlić said he was drawn to a woman who enters crime out of love, leaving top-level sport, yet is still not perceived as a “villain”. Besides the scripted series, United Media and Met Film announced in February 2025 a documentary series, “Queen Panther”. Asked who should play her, Olivera Ćirković said she would like Uma Thurman.

Greatest Achievements

• a bronze medal with the Yugoslav junior women’s national team at the 1988 European Championship
• a professional basketball career from 1986 to 2000 in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Slovenia
• the position of sports director of Crvena zvezda
• author of the book series “Ja, Pink Panter”, which drew the attention of readers across the region
• a life story that is the basis of a scripted series and a documentary

Personal Life

Olivera Ćirković has a son, who also plays basketball. She has a child with her former husband, whom she describes in interviews as a petty criminal. During her time in prison, what frightened her most was being separated from her son.

She lives in Belgrade. Details of her private life beyond what she has said publicly have not been confirmed, so they are not given here.

Interesting Facts

• The media called her “the dragon woman” and “the Pink Panther woman”.
• Her appearance at Interliber in 2018 was described by tportal as the biggest hit of the fair.
• According to the series producers, she is the only person ever to have escaped from Korydallos prison.
• Dragan Bjelogrlić noted that during her trial part of the public and the media saw her as a “female Robin Hood”.
• She says she listened to domestic music in prison, and among singers she feels closest to the energy of Indira Levak.

Legacy and Influence

Olivera Ćirković is among the best-known female figures from the world of organized crime in the Balkans. Her story shows how a successful sports career can turn into a completely different path. That is why she is often a subject for the media, film producers and readers across the region.

Her own views on it remain separate from the facts of court decisions. Courts convicted her, and today she says she does not want to glorify crime. Until the series and the documentary appear, her influence remains tied mostly to her books and public appearances.