Alessio Ghirlanda
A BALKAN mafia leader on the run from European authorities has been arrested on Costa del Sol after allegedly “torturing a rival for 24 hours” before executing him, authorities have said.
The suspect, named by Montenegrin press as Kavac cartel enforcer Krsto Maros, was tracked down in Malaga on Wednesday following a Europe-wide manhunt.
Maros, 47, had been wanted since 2021, when he fled Montenegro after allegedly planning and executing the gruesome killing in the city of Kotor.
The fugitive, who now faces up to 40 years in jail, was in charge of hiding evidence and bodies for the Kavac cartel, authorities have said.
Montenegro issued an international arrest warrant after Maros went off the grid in 2021.
The gangster had been initially traced to Barcelona, where he lived under a false identity and managed to evade capture.
On October 10 this year, Montenegrin police tipped off Spanish authorities that an individual “close to the fugitive” was travelling to Spain via Croatia and France, apparently to meet him.
The traveller reportedly took a cab from Marseille to Barcelona, and another from Barcelona to Malaga, where the two eventually reunited.
Police then swooped down on the suspects, ending a multinational operation involving law enforcement from Spain, Montenegro, France, and Croatia.
The Kavac cartel, based in Kotor on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast, has been embroiled in a bloody feud with rival gang Skaljari since 2014, according to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
In an escalation of violence that has spilled far beyond the Balkans, both groups have been linked to murders, torture, and large-scale drug trafficking across Europe.
In 2021, Kavac boss Veljiko Belivuk was arrested in Serbia alongside his right-hand man Mario Miljkovic on charges of murder, kidnapping, extortion, and drug trafficking.
The gangsters had been hiding in a safe house in Serbia’s capital Belgrade.
To their horror, Serbian police discovered the gangsters had been using an industrial meat grinder to dispose of their victims’ remains.
In the same year, two more Kavac members were arrested in Portugal while attempting to set up a new branch of the cartel in the country.
In 2022, a motorcycle rider sprayed Skaljari boss Jovan Vukotic with bullets as he travelled in a car with his wife and daughter in Istanbul, Turkey, in a killing widely linked to the rival gangs’ ongoing turf war.
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