Murder arrest bungled
AUSTRALIAN police missed their chance to arrest one of the nation’s most wanted men with a bureaucratic bungle forcing police to watch as he partied hard for months with drugs and prostitutes before arrest papers were drawn up.
News Corp Australia can reveal murder suspect Bogdan Cuic fled Brisbane three hours after the murder of Jei Jack Lee in 2012 and initially stayed in Thailand before moving to Belgrade in Serbia and later across the border in Montenegro. Police had tracked his movements across the world and local police in Montenegro were conscripted to place him under surveillance.
They watched as the suspect travelled from Podgorica to the Adriatic Sea resort town of Budva, where he was joined by three Australian men whose families were from the region and fellow members of Brisbane’s Bandidos outlaw motorcycle group, and for the next five months partied hard.
Montenegro authorities repeatedly asked Australian counterparts when they should be arrested but were ordered to stand down and monitor only as a bureaucratic bungle by Queensland police and judicial figures had meant the correct paperwork had not been prepared.
“We had them under surveillance for months, five months, but the paperwork from Brisbane never came,” one law enforcer said. “After eight months still nothing, the papers never arrived.”
Lee, 22, was shot in the head at a shopping centre at Eight Mile Plains in April 2012 after apparently going to meet someone to buy $17,000 in cocaine.
No one has been arrested over the slaying but two men close to Cuic have been jailed for contempt of court after refusing to answer questions before the Crime and Misconduct Commission looking into the Lee murder and the operations of the Bandidos.
Bogdan Cuic’s family have denied he was involved in any wrongdoing.
The revelation comes as Italian Mafia has formally sanctioned Australian crime bosses to run their global drug enterprises on their behalf as an Italian police crackdown curtails their illicit operations.
Sydney man Vaso Ulic is one of the Australians dealing with the Italian crime figures from contacts he made when he lived in Italy for two years after fleeing Australia
A confidential Australian Federal Police investigation backed by Italian police intelligence has confirmed the groups like the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, which has known members in Australia, and Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, have recruited Balkan-organised crime groups to take over operations.