Vector began telling them the life story of Marchiano Polanzo.
So, to be clear, Polanzo has had many names and aliases, in order to avoid confusion I will be referring to him by the name we all know him by. Secondly, any questions save for later. I want to be able to tell this story without interruptions. Before we get to Polanzo we will start with his parents.
Polanzo’s father, Goran was born in 1923. in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, on the coast of Montenegro. He was of mixed Italian and Montenegrin descent. His life, in the beginning, was pretty uneventful, Goran pursued an education, was a good student, and so on.
Goran’s life would take a dramatic turn during World War 2 and the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941. The country faced brutal repression and a resistance against the occupation was formed, the communist partisans. Goran would join the communist party and the resistance where he distinguished himself as an excellent organizer of party and resistance activities.
After the war, the communists won and Yugoslavia became a communist country. Goran went on a mission to Japan in 1946. to help the communist party of Japan in the defeated and allied occupied Japan.
The party was poorly organized and they needed people like Goran with exceptional skills in this area to help them get off the ground, a job Goran gladly accepted.
During his stay in Japan, he met a woman named Yuko, about the same age as him. Yuko was a member of the Japanese communist party and they became involved in many political activities together and eventually fell in love together. Yuko would later become the mother of Polanzo.
Once Goran’s time in Japan was up somewhere around the end of 1949. he had to return to his home. Yuko went along with him and they lived on the coast of Montenegro. Goran was for his services offered a high position in the Montenegrin branch of the Yugoslav communist party and they both enjoyed a luxurious life during the 1950s.
They lived in a large villa on the beach, Yuko learned the language and she was well-liked by the locals. In late March of 1962. Polanzo was born in Montenegro. He was their first child and they had him pretty late. However, Goran would come into conflict with the federal government, and fearing prosecution, He, Yuko, and Polanzo moved away to Japan in 1965.
Polanzo was of mixed racial and ethnic origin, which made him a target of bullying by the largely xenophobic Japan of the 20th century. Polanzo had a lot of violent outbursts during his early childhood, he would often get into fights in school with other kids and even assaulted a teacher physically.
His violent tendencies probably come from his father Goran, who would frequently beat him up whenever the young Polanzo would misbehave. During Polanzo’s teens, he would turn to petty robberies and other forms of juvenile delinquency. During this time he started to wear sunglasses all of the time to hide his eyes and his ethnicity. The glasses made him look Japanese. In 1977. Polanzo was arrested for the first time for vandalism.
Eventually, when he turned 18 in 1980. Polanzo would join the Yakuza. The Dojima family to be precise, your old buddies Kiryu. You may have run into him during the 1980s but you probably don’t remember him because he wasn’t someone important at the time.
Polanzo was head of racketeering shops and business in the northern part of Kamurocho as part of the Dojima family and he had his sights set on the SEGA arcade there. Eventually, he basically forced his way into a managerial role within the arcade and SEGA had to accept him. SEGA was powerless against the yakuza and had to bow down to any of their aggressions. Polanzo operated in Kamurocho and that arcade from 1982. to 1987.
With Polanzo managing this one small arcade and leading his small group of crooks he had decided to move up and to go for something bigger. An idea struck him and he started thinking about his second homeland. Yugoslavia.
In the late 1980s, most communist countries were moving away from communism, market reforms were started to be implemented, and slowly they were opening up to the rest of the world. It would eventually lead to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and communism entirely due to a wave of protests but at this point, they still haven’t reached it.
Polanzo made a pitch to both his superiors at the Dojima family and the executives at SEGA. Polanzo had suggested that he open up a branch of the Dojima family in Montenegro, opening up casinos and other businesses in this new land of opportunity. To SEGA he suggested opening a branch of SEGA in Yugoslavia, which he would use as a front for his criminal activities.
The Dojima family saw the money-making potential and the executives at SEGA were happy to accept hoping that he would leave the country and them alone. Both groups agreed and Polanzo went with capital and people to start his business venture in the summer of 1987.
He opened up the new SEGA of Yugoslavia, a subsidiary of the SEGA Corporation, with its seat in Montenegro, the town of Budva. Polanzo was selling SEGA products, however, his true business was smuggling through the Adriatic Sea. Naturally, nobody would suspect a video game company to smuggle various goods and drugs, in the beginning, this business venture was highly successful.
Polanzo was sending a share of the profits to the Dojima family and even to SEGA of Japan to appease them for allowing this to happen. Eventually, the federal Yugoslav government would catch wind of this, and in 1988. and Polanzo was arrested. However, he would be immediately set free.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Wonder why they would release a criminal? Well, they recruited him. The communist government of Yugoslavia would arrest and release gangsters like him and make them work for them by doing dirty work they couldn’t do themselves. Assassinations of journalists and dissidents, intimidations, threats, beating up protesters, and so on.
The government could keep itself clean and use gangsters for such activities while the gangsters in turn would be able to keep doing their criminal activities and their criminal empires would remain intact. Polanzo certainly had an empire after his arrest.
During the late 1980s, he was so powerful that he became more powerful than the Dojima family that he was officially working for. The Dojima family wanted to control him but it was no use. Polanzo was a continent away and he was making so much money on his own. As captain of SEGA of Yugoslavia Polanzo started opening Hotels, casinos, and trading in real estate. It seemed like he was unstoppable.
Things would take a bloody turn. In 1991. the breakup of Yugoslavia began, a bloody civil war that tore that country apart and Polanzo was caught right in the middle of it. Since he resided in Montenegro, which remained in a state of union with Serbia at the time, the company he ran, SEGA of Yugoslavia was hit by international sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, and the company’s assets were frozen. SEGA of Japan also cut ties with him.
Polanzo as he was unofficially employed by the Serbian government was drafted into the war in Bosnia like many of his gangster colleagues. His empire had shambled, not long ago he was managing hotels and smuggling drugs, now he was in the middle of Bosnia, commanding troops and fighting in a bloody civil war.
The Dojima family had lost contact with him before the war and weren’t even aware of his activities anymore, while SEGA of Japan believed that they were finally done with Polanzo’s terror over their company.
During the war, Polanzo committed many crimes against humanity with the troops he commanded. They raped, pillaged, and murdered indiscriminately civilians. Unfortunately, those things were very widespread in the Bosnian war.
In 1995. the war was finally over with the signing of the Dayton Agreement. The sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro were lifted and Polanzo decided to settle in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital after the war. In Japan during that same year, Kiryu, you set in motion events that brought about the destruction of the Dojima family. I’m sure you remember. With the boss of the Dojima dead and many of his subordinates left without a master, Polanzo contacted them.
It was through them that he pressured SEGA of Japan with threats to reinstate him SEGA of Yugoslavia, which he wanted to operate in Belgrade. With SEGA again being powerless, they caved into his demands and they sent him funds to restart his enterprise. After that was done many of those masterless yakuza joined Polanzo in Belgrade and they served them.
President Milošević ruled Serbia during the 1990s. Milošević had made the country isolated from the rest of the world and turned it into an autocratic and kleptocratic failed state. Inflation, unemployment, and basic necessities were scarce, and civil liberties were constantly trampled over.
It was after the war that Polanzo became a close associate with Milošević. Polanzo continued to offer his state much like he did before, assassinating, intimidating, and beating up journalists, dissidents, protesters, and anyone that threatened the Milošević government. In return, Polanzo could build a criminal enterprise without any consequences. This career was offered to many of the gangsters who served in the war in Bosnia or Croatia.
As such it was an almost Mafia-controlled state. Milošević and his associates enriched themselves while they pushed their populace to poverty, ethnic wars, and international sanctions. All while accusing those against them of being the real problem in the country.
While Polanzo had gotten rich before the war, he had gotten insanely rich after the war. He would drive the most expensive cars, and eat the most luxurious food while living in a penthouse, all the while the regular person stood in very long lines in the convenience store just to get a loaf of breed.
This was not going to last forever. Again, everything would soon change in the year 2000. The DOS(Democratic Opposition of Serbia), a coalition of various liberal parties that were against the Milošević regime came together and were able to finally beat him in an election. He at first didn’t accept defeat but due to massive demonstrations in October of that year, Milošević resigned.
The wind of change that had hit Europe after the fall of communism finally arrived in Serbia a decade later and a new era began. The country was now coming back on its feet recovering from the damage of wars, sanctions, and organized crime. It also took its first steps into becoming a true democracy.
The new prime minister whose name was Đinđić at the time decided to extradite Milošević to the Hauge, to the International courts to face justice for what he had done. However, the new government wasn’t going to stop at just the president, he was going to extradite all those responsible for crimes against humanity and he was determined to fight against organized crime. Among those was Polanzo.
Polanzo left Serbia in December of 2000. fearing he was going to get sent to the Hauge and went to Japan. He closed SEGA of Yugoslavia and became involved with company politics within SEGA of Japan.
Soon it became clear that Japan might extradite him to the Hauge as Japan recognized the international courts, Polanzo realized he was cornered and had nowhere to run. That’s when Polanzo came up with an idea, an event I’m sure you remember and are familiar with. Polanzo in a coup, forcibly seized power and became the president of the SEGA corporation.
Why did he do that? The president of the SEGA corporation has legal immunity, which keeps him safe from Hauge's extradition request. With his changing aliases and identities throughout the years he was also under everyone’s radar and managed to keep his identity and past hidden. That’s why he has clung to his power as president of SEGA with his abolishment of term limits. He knows it’s the only way he is permanently safe from prosecution, so he keeps his grip tight on his position.
In Serbia, the prime minister I mentioned, Đinđić was assassinated in 2003. The assassination was done and organized by those gangster associates of Milošević who were facing the consequences of a decade of crime they brought on the entire country. Unfortunately, the project of democracy in Serbia and the principles of the DOS failed.
Today Serbia is ruled by many of the same people complicit in the horrors of the 1990s. Civil liberties are once again at risk and the state employs gangsters to do its dirty work while they remain immune from the law. All the while the new president creates ethnic tension within the region and his associates enrich themselves through illegal means very similar to Milošević of the 1990s.
To bring it back to Polanzo, as you already know he has helped Robotnik out of prison by paying for the best lawyers in Japan. He has financed the Mean Bean Machine which can see people’s dreams. Its purpose is to ensure copyright law but who knows what kind of sick plan men like Polanzo and Robotnik could use it for. I hope you all understand that we must stop them!
You wonder how and why? Well, that’s why I brought you all together. If you remember after Polanzo seized power in SEGA, he amended the company statute and retroactively legitimized his rule. A leadership change in any high-ranking office of the SEGA corporation and the wider media group could be done so if the official in question is challenged to a duel. If the challenger beats the official in a fist fight, he assumes the position.
That amendment is still in effect. In fact, that’s exactly how Knuckles became vice president. He just fought and won against the previous vice president. Tonight, all of the SEGA high-ranking officials are meeting in the HQ. If all of us come together, we can take them on, win, and free our company from the evil of Polanzo.
Once Polanzo is defeated, he can be extradited to the International Criminal Court in the Hauge to face justice for crimes against humanity in Bosnia and we can stop Robotnik’s machine from ever entering the market. I know this is a sudden thing to ask. Especially since all of you are retired heroes. I know Sonic you said many times that you are never going back.
But please, I hope you see how important this is. Let’s all do this together to defeat Polanzo and Robotnik!