Balkan link in drug web

Fugitive Australians using sleepers to import narcotics Down Under accents talk about ‘sugar’ over coffee

AUSTRALIAN gangsters have created one of the world’s biggest drug cartels and are trafficking tonnes of cocaine and MDMA about the world – specifically targeting our ports with authorities conceding they are unlikely to ever totally stop them.

A lengthy News Corp Australia investigation has found the Balkan-based gangs – led by some of Australia’s most wanted men – have established “entrenched infiltration” of almost every level of Australian society and according to Australian

5 Federal Police are now waking “sleepers” of young criminals to aid in the shipments of tonnes of illicit drugs into Aussie ports.

The cartel is run by a core group of notorious gangsters who once controlled Kings Cross’ Golden Mile but have now formed offshore bases in Montenegro, Spain and Holland to move the drugs, guns and cash about.

“Balkan organised crime is now the biggest threat to Australia, so entrenched and disciplined and influential in local

VVO1 VASO ULIC (b. 1958)

HAKAN AYIK (b. 1982)

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3 communities it has made it a serious challenge to crack,” one law enforcer said.

“They no longer just operate along ethnic lines, they are forming new alliances all the time, they are outsourcing jobs and it has been hard to cultivate community sources to help in the fight.”

One confidential assessment by the Australian Federal Police read by News Corp has warned the systemic Balkan crime network was moving to the next level now awakening “sleepers” or extended “family” 1970s First migrants fromfro Yugoslavia arrive in Australia.Australia Criminal groups form in Sydney,Sy Melbourne and WollongongW based loosely on Serbian mafia’s Zemun clan.cl Vaso Ulic arrives in AustraliaAustr in 1979. 1980s-1990s1980s- 1990 Migrants now enforcers and drug dealersdea in Kings Cross, then interstate. Ethnic-base Ethnic-based Balkan clans grow in promine prominence with help fro from Serbian param paramilitaries. 1990s1990 Ulic, alreadya a recognisedreco criminal,crimi is a suspectsuspe in a 1993 murdermurd and extraditedextr from Germany.Ger But NSWNS police corruptionco was unearthedun and chargeschar later dropped.dropp 2000 Ulic moves to I Italy but Montenegro po police ask if he will ret return to members to groom them into taking over the multimilliondollar enterprises through “effective succession plans”.

Those families are described as being either direct relatives or from well-established and historical Mafia-like clans from the former Yugoslavian states who moved to Australia in the “second migration wave” from the Balkan region in the 1980s and 1990s in state-sponsored infiltration of Australia by the former regime of Serbian Slobodan Milosevic.

1 assist investigation into an attempted political assassination of Serbian opposition party leader. 2005 Ulic flees Australia permanently after hearing about warrants for his arrest as he is branded a primary ecstasy supplier in Australia. 2007 Australian Federal Police begin a dozen investigations — still running — into Balkan crime. One operation covers Balkan importation of 660kg of drugs. 2008 At least 70 former Balkan soldiers wanted for war crimes are believed to be hiding in Australia, some of whom are involved in organised crime. 2010 Australian police begin piecing together comprehensive Balkan criminal network. 2014 Montenegro police are handed AFP case files outlining alleged crimes by Ulic against Australia but because they were begun locally, they fall under local criminal codes.

It concluded Balkan criminals were now likely to have had “more drug successes than failures” in their enterprises in Australia.

“The AFP has witnessed the growing influence of various criminal entities and groups from the Balkan region,” one police intelligence report concludes.

“These entities have come to notice across a large number of AFP narcotic and money laundering investigations.”

State-based and federal police have pieced together a IN a smoky nondescript cafe on Svetog Petra Cetinjskog Blvd in the Montenegro capital of Podgorica, a group of men relax in soft-backed chairs to discuss business.

There is nothing much that distinguishes them from others in the cafe but some of the men at one table have slight Australian accents and talk about brown sugar and white sugar and it’s not the type you put in coffee.

Brown sugar heroin coming out of Afghanistan and the more refined white heroin selling now for as little as 30 euros per gram have in recent years been a rising narcotic in Australia and Europe.

An undercover police officer flicks his head up motioning toward the group of men, slugs back his short black and nonchalantly shakes his head. comprehensive picture of the burgeoning extent of the criminality from extensive undercover surveillance operations stemming from up to a dozen overlapping case files.

It is understood they are using well-known cargo and cruise shipping lines and using paid crew members and stevedores at ports to move bulk consignments off the wharves to hand to outlaw motorcycle groups.

The Bandidos have specifically been named in connection with the criminal enterprise as well as specific motorcycle identities in Queensland and South Australia.

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“The men, they meet here all the time over there, over here, wherever, it doesn’t matter, we watch and we see who comes and goes, many Australian accents, many ‘best men’ of Ulic but they no longer talk of kilos they talk of tonnes,” the local undercover officer says.

Ulic is Vaso Ulic, a 55-yearold ethnic Albanian who migrated to Australia in 1979 and within a few years was working as a small-time foot soldier running drugs and cash along the Golden Mile of Kings Cross. He is now seen as a kingpin of an organisation so big, few drug consignments enter Australia without his knowledge or permission.

Ulic is linked to five key families based in Sydney who oversee local operations and is seen as “highly influential”.