HE lives well, dresses fine and travels the globe extensively first class with little to distinguish him from any other smart expat Australian businessman forced overseas to find their fortune and success on the global markets.

But you’ve never heard his name or seen his image as the casino boss is suspected to be one of Australia’s biggest criminals who through his extensive business network in Eastern Europe and South America has secretly been co-ordinating the global trafficking of hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine, heroin and MDMA.

Such are his hauls, in Australia alone they are measured by the tonne and his gains in the tens or hundreds of millions but since he has never faced a court, he cannot be publicly identified.

A confidential Australian Federal Police intelligence report seen by News Corp Australia has however flagged the 57-year-old former Perth man, which this newspaper has chosen not to name, as a major international drug trafficking threat directly linked to 17 separate strike force investigations into the movement of drugs via mostly cargo and cruise ships.

Authorities know where he is but Interpol has an active “Blue Notice” on him that as opposed to Red Notices which call for immediate arrest, the Blue hue just requests global police forces monitor and record his movements to establish how wide his criminal activities extend.

The problem is such is his status so high up on the criminal chain, authorities have struggled to directly connect him enough to seizures to mount a legal prosecution.

It is understood he is being looked at by several police forces including the AFP and counterparts from the UK, the US Drug Enforcement Agency and authorities in Spain and Serbia and his now elevation to a major global drug trafficker emerged last year after the arrest of his close friend and former Kings Cross bagman Vaso Ulic who is currently in jail awaiting charges related to trafficking to Australia.

The AFP describe the businessman as having “poly criminal connections” using contacts in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe and his family in South America, including a sister, to traffic narcotics to the extent he is now listed as one of four major suppliers of drugs to Australia alongside three Balkan identities, one being a former major Kings Cross heroin importer of the 1980s now living in Montenegro and another based in China.

In 2015/16 year, 657kgs of cocaine was seized by Australian authorities, about double the amount the previous year but last year the total figure was more than 9 tonnes. Police concede if they have intercepted that much there’s a lot more that successfully come in and the anonymous businessman is responsible for a lot of that.

His drug activities are run out of his residence in Spain and it’s no coincidence the AFP in a separate 2018 intelligence brief now notes a renewed influx of MDMA out of Europe being detected entering Australia, a trend not seen for some years with China having long been established as the usual production and shipment jump point. Ingestion of liquid cocaine has also been noted as an emerging trend of smugglers.

EXTENSIVE NETWORK

The Perth man, a dual national of Balkan decent who runs a successful casino in Europe, had initially only appeared on intelligence files for having travelled to the former Yugoslav Republic during the 1990s conflict but then in 1998 he was connected to the drugs trade and was forced to flee Perth in 2003 after being connected to a high level investigation into a heroin seizure.

He largely vanished from Australian police attention for a few years until he resurfaced some years later in Montenegro alongside Ulic and then linked to numerous drug seizures including a huge stash of cocaine seized by authorities in Belgium.

He was then wanted for questioning by police in Podgorica over a shooting incident in a local casino where the only witness was murdered in hospital, before he moved to Spain. It is suspected he travels on the passport of his brother who died in a car accident on his way to Belgrade in the early 1990s when drugs apparently burst in his stomach.

He makes regular trips to South America where much of his cocaine shipments emanate and his family lives as well as Sweden, Holland, South Africa and Singapore. It is believed to uses Thailand to meet up with China-based underworld figures. His extensive network includes contacts within the powerful Mexican gangs La Compania, Zetas and Sinaloa, links first detected by AFP’s covert Operation Lucca and Operation Mackle several years ago.