Australia’s ‘Pablo Escobar’ Vaso Ulic is arrested in dramatic sting over huge $500million coke haul – after a 10-year manhunt across three continents

Australian drug lord Vaso Ulic has been arrested after years on the run in a dramatic police operation targeting a large-scale international cocaine trade.

The former Kings Cross identity – whose underworld network is said to be so vast he has been dubbed the new Pablo Escobar – has been arrested over a 2.5-tonne haul.

Police in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica, where Ulic lives in luxury on a private vineyard growing grape vines imported from South Australia, arrested the 65-year-old on Wednesday.

He is accused of masterminding a plot to import a 2.5 tonne shipment of cocaine from Colombia to Australia and Europe.

Ulic, who fled Australia in 2005 after a $50 million seizure of ecstasy, was arrested along with nine others, including his son Nikola, in a police operation codenamed “General” ordered by the Montenegrin Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The months-long joint operation involved the Australian Federal Police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency.

The Australian Federal Police have been assisting Montenegrin authorities over the past seven years in targeting Ulic, who allegedly used their territory to coordinate massive drug shipments to Australia.

Intelligence reports about his alleged drug trafficking have convinced police he is the mastermind behind a huge amount of drugs and weapons smuggled into Australia every year.

Vaso Ulic has been nicknamed ‘the new Pablo Escobar’ because he was in charge of the massive cocaine shipments from Colombia to Europe and Australia.

Ulic is now in pre-trial detention in a prison in Montenegro, but denies any wrongdoing, Libertas Press reports.

He was previously considered an Australian Priority Organisational Target (APOT) by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, but that status has now expired.

Ulic was last arrested in Montenegro in 2017, when a senior AFP officer said that in addition to smuggling ecstasy, “He does cocaine, he does meth … and money laundering. He is a very sophisticated high-level criminal figure.”

Following the latest arrest of the gang of 10 suspects on Wednesday, detectives allege the group attempted to smuggle 1.57 tonnes of cocaine from South America to Australia and Europe during the Covid pandemic in October 2020.

According to Vukas Radonjic of the Montenegrin Public Prosecutor’s Office, that shipment was “intercepted by law enforcement authorities in Colombia.”

A second shipment of 900kg of the drug, scheduled for June 2021, was intercepted by law enforcement agencies in Australia.

Ulic was born in Albania in the late 1950s and emigrated to Australia in 1979.

The 2.5 tonnes of cocaine followed earlier intercepted shipments of 1.57 tonnes in 2020 and 900 kg in 2021, all from Colombia to Europe and Australia

Vaso Ulic (above) when he was arrested in 2017 in Montenegro, where he lives in luxury on a vineyard planted with grape vines imported from South Australia

He worked as a small-time ‘bag man’ on what was known in the Sydney underworld as the Kings Cross ‘Golden Mile’, where corrupt police officers were on the payroll of criminals.

Ulic rose to become a major player, commanding a global criminal empire that focused on huge shipments of cocaine and other illegal substances through Sydney’s wharves.

When Ulic was last arrested in Montenegro in 2017, the AFP did not request the extradition of the then 58-year-old Ulic, despite the fact that he had been a top target for 12 years.

There is no extradition treaty between Australia and Montenegro, but fugitives can be returned under a legal arrangement.

At the time, Commander Bruce Hill, AFP’s organised crime manager, said: “We can say without any doubt that he is one of the leaders, if not the leader, of drug trafficking into Australia.”