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 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 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” members to groom them into taking over the multi-million dollar 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 regimen of Serbian Slobodan Milosevic.

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

But it is not just crime families that has raised concerns with several ongoing covert police surveillance operations, one of which had confirmed several notorious crime figures thought retired in the 1990s had gone on to lead global drug operations from fortified bases in Montenegro, Serbia and Spain.

The mostly Australian nationals run group, led by former Kings Cross identity Vaso Ulic who left Australia in 2005 never to return, was now networked to become one of the biggest transnational crime groups in the world importing six tonnes a year into Australia alone but many more to and from other destinations from South Africa to Europe, China, Nigeria and the Americas with law enforcers from notably the United Kingdom, United States and Italy involved in their pursuance.

It has been confirmed the prosecutions office in Montenegro has an extensive file on Ulic and other figures in the country as part of an international arrest warrant to break the cartel up.

But the office has been considering the extensive brief now for almost one year despite being under pressure from other European nations Montenegro wants to impress as it moves toward being formally inducted into the EU. While no extradition treaty exists with Montenegro, both police there and in Serbia have been actively working with AFP agents to establish if the source of the global crime was perpetrated locally and therefore the arrest warrants can be pursued and prosecuted locally.

The AFP has formally declined a request by News Corp to discuss the broad issue of Balkan crime or individuals involved.

In another case file, it has been learned a collection of multinational crime bosses including ex-Kings Cross figures met in a Melbourne restaurant with notorious Melbourne-based identities to discuss further carving up of Australian drug importation and distribution and specific jobs in Queensland. The men were all previously well known but had not been seen in each other’s company.

“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.”

One dire internal police assessment relayed to the Federal Government claims their criminality now extended worldwide with direct Australian-Balkan organised crime links to notorious Mexican and Colombian clans and cartels and Asian triads including the 14K group, South African crime lords and Italian and Dutch criminal groups targeting predominantly Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland and South Australia using Macedonian expats from NSW and the motorcycle gangs as part of the national distribution network. Darwin has also been deemed a port of opportunity by criminals to smuggle goods in.

State-based and federal police have pieced together a 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 police have established that members of other heavyweight crime groups in Serbia, Colombia and Mexico have held meetings in Spain, Thailand and Australia to establish formal links and to create criminal parameters to operate and discuss travel routes, mostly through a well known cargo and cruise shipping line 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. Perth is also named as a targeted drop off point for the drugs as is Botany Bay in Sydney. Also worrying is that police have identified their contacts, mostly on ethnic lines, are well placed in transport and logistics about the country both maritime, air and on road and use a businesslike approach with in-house money remitters, accountants, legal advisers and lawyers to track payments, purchases and distributions routes and advise on laws to avoid detection.

Europe’s law enforcement agency Europol told News Corp Australia the western Balkans were rife with serious and organised crime affecting the EU but also other member states including Australia. Their criminal activity sourced back to the region is also touching continents including West and South Africa, the Caribbean and South America in all forms of crime.

One officer said the crime groups did operate in cells however they were “well connected with each other and their members are very mobile, financially powerful”.

“The Western Balkans region is not only used as crossroads for trafficking of illicit commodities, but also as a stash and distribution area for some illegal commodities, but mainly for drugs and weapons,” he said.

In recent times he said it had been noted by police that Outlaw Motorcycle Groups (OMCG) had established themselves in the region to specifically work in with the Balkan crime groups.

HATCHING BATTLEPLAN

In a smoky, nondescript cafe on Svetog Petra Cetinjskog Boulevard 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 of leatherjacket clad businessmen crowding small tables and uniformed officers from the nearby national police headquarters of the south-eastern European country sitting about chain smoking and drinking strong coffee.

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.

“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.

“Some shipments found is not coincidence, it’s strategy for others that come in successfully. But here is where it starts, drinking coffee, and talking with ‘best men’ about tonnes of cocaine to Belgium and the police and customs officers who will be paid to help the shipment, Spain and UK too, wherever, but Australia is main target now, the prices are unbelievable — six times more than here in Europe — so you send more, take the risk, get what you can in and this is all run by Australians.”

Vaso Ulic is a 55-year-old 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 infamous Golden Mile of Kings Cross but who is now seen as a kingpin of an organisation so big, very few drug consignments enter Australia without his knowledge or permission.

He alone has been linked to up to six tonnes of MDMA and hundreds of kilos of heroin of Balkan-sponsored drugs entering Australia each year.

According to local intelligence reports it was Ulic — a close friend of convicted underworld identity Bill Bayeh — who in 2011 had strategically brought together the various Mafia-like clans from different ethnic backgrounds within the former Yugoslavia. He is described on Podgorica streets as “smart, stable and dangerous” who now lives like a duke in a “castle” outside the capital surrounded by green fields, a private vineyard from vines imported from South Australia and from which he makes 20,000 bottles of fine red wine and a small army of heavily armed men. He fled Australia in 2005 when the Australian Crime Commission and the Australian Federal Police moved in to question him over the seizure of a haul of drugs and unexplained contract killings.

His criminal enterprise run from his fortress has now extended and involves significant money laundering, swapping weapons and ammunition for cocaine out of South America and moving vast amounts of MDMA and MDMA substitutes around the world for his cartel but also at least a dozen others including Italian Mafia groups that have allowed Balkans figures to run their empires while Italian police conduct a lengthy crackdown. His network is extensive and there are very few people he can’t call on for a favour, either from former Yugoslavian Republic migrants in Australia who operate out of fear rather than favour or others; he recently saw a money dispute over a seized haul of drugs in Australia so dispatched a local Balkan uniformed police officer to travel to Australia to return the money to the buyers.

Much of the drugs travel along the so-called “Balkan Route” once used to smuggle food and weapons during the war and now operating as a heroin and MDMA smuggling run with the heroin going from Afghanistan, Republic of Iran and Pakistan and on through the Balkans to western Europe or hitting Turkey and shooting left through Ukraine and onto Russia but also transiting via Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Australia’s haul of illicit drugs including MDMA and MDMA substitutes in recent times have come from South America via South Africa but again the name Ulic crops up in police intelligence reports for hauls.

In Australia, Ulic is linked to five key families based in Sydney who oversee local operations and is seen as “highly influential” in the national Balkan community.

“He is aware of ongoing police interest in him but he knows he is slightly out of reach where he is,” one AFP officer told News Corp. “It’s fair to say he has far-reaching influence over Australian organised crime and he’s brought in some of his mates from the old days of Kings Cross.”

A large slice of the world’s movement of cocaine is also now coordinated from the Balkans and in someway involves Ulic, the drug travelling from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia transferring through ports like Chile, Argentina and Brazil with corrupt sailors then delivering to the safe hands of corrupt officials in busy ports in Australia, Spain, the United States and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Mostly through cargo ships but also cruise liners where they are simply walked off the vessel in luggage. Of this part of the operation is another Western Australian-born suspect (NAME REDACTED) named in police intelligence reports who turns 55 years-old next month and who fled Australia in 2003 to establish himself as a major supplier of cocaine, as well as MDMA and heroin to Australia, but who since 1998 has been the target of 14 separate AFP operations that in a decade linked him to more than five tonnes of heroin, cocaine, MDMA and cannabis shipped to Australia.

He lived in Podgorica for two years and was named by local police as Ulic’s “best man”, a term of endearment for someone close and trusted.

He was wanted for questioning over a shooting at a local casino and has been using the passport identity of a dead relative who was a drug mule and died in Serbia in the 1990s when his haul burst in his stomach. He also uses a fake Australian passport and there is a “blue notice” issued by Interpol to monitor his movements.

He is deemed by police to be “significantly connected” to Chinese and South American crime groups including the notorious 14K gang and Italian and Dutch crime groups working out of Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne. The two former Sydney men are backed by (NAME REDACTED), a 60-year-old former Kings Cross heavy involved in armed robbery and drugs on the strip in the 1980s but who now takes care of the South African end of cocaine smuggling to Australia travelling between there and a home in Montenegro.

There is also (NAME REDACTED), convicted of murder in NSW and formally linked to the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle group who, according to prison guards, his visitors when he was in prison read like a “Who’s Who” of the Balkan organised crime mileau and who allegedly was still running operations from the inside before his release.

The team is joined by another former “muscle” from the Kings Cross of the 1970s and 1980s and the era of notorious now deceased gangsters George Freeman and George Savvas. He was questioned over a number of crimes during the 1980s including a 1984 gangland shooting in Sydney’s Chinatown and the disappearance of “Mr Rent-A-Kill” Christopher Dale Flannery and by 2000 was still paying corrupt NSW cops. The Croatian-Australian dual national is based in NSW and is still known as the “enforcer” and Ulic’s eyes and ears in Australia ensuring continued Balkan community clan respect and loyalty is adhered to.