Vaso Ulic is a meticulous planner. Yet, this time, his alleged plans went seriously awry, literally going up in smoke.
Police say the sometime vigneron was passionate about cultivating an antipodean industry: the Australian cocaine drug trade.
The arrest of Ulic last month has exposed an audacious plan to bring 2.5 tonnes of cocaine into Australia that was brought undone by a series of unfortunate events.
The panicked crew allegedly set fire to a boat stuffed with cocaine when a plane flew overhead.Credit: NSW Police
Ulic was arrested in a global police operation involving the FBI, Europol and NSW Police that also saw his Australian-born son Nikolai Ulic and 10 others arrested in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica in July. Documents outlining Montenegrin authorities’ allegations against Ulic, obtained by the Herald, reveal the truly global scope of the operation, which could have generated $7.5 billion, based on Sydney’s current street value of $300-a-gram of cocaine .
Financed in part by bank accounts in the tax haven of the Canary Islands, it is alleged the cocaine was taken from Colombia to be processed in Ecuador.
Once it made it out of South America, police allege the shipments were to travel through European ports and on to the deep waters off NSW. There, 250 kilometres out to sea, a crew of fishermen were allegedly paid to transfer the drugs onto a smaller vessel and import them to the planned address.
The drug kingpin confined all communication about the alleged plot to underworld encrypted apps, with codenames including AC/DC, Robin Hood and Duran Duran.
It is alleged drug runners in South America were given a specific banknote to show each other, with the serial number proof of identity.
The syndicate had rented two hangars in Lake Macquarie, south of Newcastle, from where the drug would allegedly be distributed after the packages had cleared Sydney’s Port Botany.
A storage shed in Lake Macquarie, where police allegedly located some of the cocaine.Credit: NSW Police
Each 25kg package of cocaine was stamped with a clandestine symbol - a rooster, a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe - to denote its contents.
The syndicate had allegedly paid off police, the navy and even guerillas in South America.
But things just kept going wrong. The apps were shut down - one app – An0m – was secretly run by the FBI. The packages were intercepted by Colombian authorities and replaced with harmless white powder.
When a plane flew over a boat in the waters off South America that was allegedly stuffed with cocaine, its panicked crew set the vessel on fire. It is also alleged a different boat was overloaded with the drug and couldn’t leave the Ecuadorian dock.
Vaso Ulic, 65, was arrested in a dramatic sting codenamed “General” in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, in July (left and bottom right); Ulic was arrested in 2017 (top right).Credit: Libertas Press/Savo Prelević; NSW Police; Supplied
The pandemic closed borders, preventing syndicate members from getting to South America to oversee. The Panama Canal shut, so plans to send the shipment through Europe were scuppered; instead, the ship was forced to navigate South America’s treacherous Cape Horn to reach the deep waters off NSW. Ulic’s alleged men on the ground in Sydney were arrested and remain before the courts.
Some of the drugs were intercepted by South American authorities and the US Coast Guard, who replaced the cocaine with an inert substance that would be used by police in an alleged Sydney sting.
Ulic remains in custody in Europe, where he will remain remanded for at least 30 days.
Born in Albania, Ulic immigrated to Australia in the early 1970s and worked on Kings Cross’ Golden Mile where he allegedly played an outsized role in Sydney’s underworld. He returned to the Balkans in the early 2000s, moving to Montenegro where he established a home on the outskirts of the capital, Podgorica, featuring a private vineyard cultivated with grapes sourced from South Australia.
Montenegro and Australia do not have an extradition treaty.
He was also arrested in Podgorica on drugs charges in 2017. At the time, then-AFP organised crime commander Bruce Hill told reporters: “We can categorically, without any doubt, say he is one of the kingpins if not the kingpin of bringing drugs to Australia … he’s a very sophisticated high-level crime figure.”