Australian drug kingpin Vaso Ulic has been caught in a dramatic police sting on a massive cocaine smuggling operation after years on the run. The one-time Kings Cross identity - whose underworld network is allegedly so huge he is known as the new Pablo Escobar - was arrested over a 2. Police in the Montenegro capital of Podgorica - where Ulic lives in luxury at a private vineyard with grapevines imported from South Australia - swooped on the year-old on Wednesday.
He is accused of masterminding a plot to import the 2. Australian Federal Police have assisted Montenegrin authorities for at least seven years in targeting Ulic for allegedly using their territory to coordinate mass shipments of drugs to Australia.
Intelligence reports on his alleged trafficking have convinced police he is the godfather behind a huge haul of illicit drugs and weapons smuggled into Australia each year. Australian drug kingpin Vaso Ulic is arrested in Montenegro over a massive 2. Vaso Ulic has earned the nickname of the 'new Pablo Escobar' for masterminding huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to Europe and Australia. Ulic is now on remand in prison in Montenegro but has denied any wrongdoing, Libertas Press reported.
Ulic was last arrested in Montenegro in , when a senior AFP officer said that as well as trafficking ecstasy: 'He does cocaine, he does meth He's a very sophisticated high-level crime figure'. Following the latest swoop to arrest the gang of 10 suspects on Wednesday, investigators allege the group tried to smuggle 1.
That shipment 'was intercepted by the detection authorities in Colombia', Vukas Radonjic of the Montenegrin Special Prosecution Service said. A second shipment of kg of the drug, planned in June , was intercepted by detection authorities in Australia. Ulic was born in Albania in the late s and emigrated to Australia in The 2.
