Authorities in Montenegro might not be able to catch the country's most notorious fugitive crime boss, but they are moving to dismantle his financial empire.
The Special State Prosecutor's Office asked Tuesday the High Court in Podgorica to permanently confiscate a sprawling portfolio of real estate and luxury vehicles it believes is in his or his wife’s possession. While the official statement only identified the targets by their initials, R.Z. and his wife, T.Z., the request appears to be detailing the hidden wealth of the reputed Kavač clan leader Radoje Zvicer and his wife Tamara Zvicer. Local media reports also name the two as the targets of this request.
The timing of this massive forfeiture request is no coincidence. It serves as one of the first major tests of Montenegro's sweeping new "Anti-Mafia Law," passed on September 4. The government hailed the legislation as a "historic step" that has already caused an "earthquake in criminal circles," specifically because it empowers the state to permanently confiscate assets in organized crime cases even before a final judicial verdict is reached.
Crucially, the law shifts the burden of proof, requiring accused cartel figures to prove their wealth was acquired legally. Following the law's passage, the government declared that crime will "never again be a business model" in the country.
The confiscation request was immediately welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Bečić. In an official statement reported by local media outlet Vijesti, Bečić noted that targeting illicit wealth and purging corrupt officials represent "the most deadly blows to the foundations of organized crime." Pledging that Montenegro will "never return to the dark ages of mafia occupation," he said the new legal framework allows the state to rapidly dismantle criminal infrastructure.
For Zvicer, the legal foundation for the seizure was triggered by his final 16-year prison sentence in Montenegro for drug trafficking and creating a criminal organization. However, his rap sheet stretches far beyond a single conviction.
In July 2026, he was handed a separate 40-year maximum first-instance sentence for orchestrating a drug smuggling and assassination syndicate alongside corrupt police officers. He also holds a final conviction in Serbia for identity forgery, while a raft of active indictments for murder and organized crime remain pending against him across Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece.
The 43-year-old, whose whereabouts have been unknown since 2021, remains the target of a sweeping Interpol red notice and is actively hunted across borders. Earlier this year, Austria's Criminal Intelligence Service offered a 20,000 euro ($22,540) reward for the armed and dangerous fugitive, seeking him for his role in organizing an 83-kilogram cocaine pipeline into Vienna.
According to Austrian authorities, the athletic, blue-eyed boss operates under at least 15 aliases and bears distinctive gunshot scars across the left side of his upper torso. The manhunt was so intense that in August, the Montenegrin Ministry of Internal Affairs escalated the stakes, offering a 500,000 euro ($562,834) bounty for information leading directly to his arrest.
Once a single Montenegrin syndicate smuggling South American cocaine into Europe, the Kavač and Škaljari clans violently fractured in 2014 over a botched drug deal in Spain. Their ensuing turf war for control of the billion-euro narcotics trade has claimed dozens of lives and deeply polarized the Balkan criminal underworld.
Prosecutors are now seeking to seize at least 54,567 square meters of property believed to have been purchased with criminal proceeds and carefully concealed behind a network of proxies, including front companies, legal counsel, and close family members.
The bulk of the targeted real estate is concentrated in the Kotor region on Montenegro's Adriatic coast, with heavy investments right in the clan's namesake stronghold of Kavač. Assets there include multi-story buildings, orchards, and more than 20,000 square meters of land and forest. Among the most prominent are a massive complex featuring a 355-square-meter duplex, as well as a separate residential space with an attic and garages—both formally registered to T.Z., according to prosecutors. Two other residential buildings and 10 garages are registered to multiple individuals, including her father, while a local company formally holds the rights to the majority of the forest, their documents say.
The seizures even reach into Škaljari, the ancestral territory of the Kavač clan’s deadly rivals, where the wife formally holds a half-share of a 188-square-meter courtyard.
Further along the Kotor coast, the dragnet caught a multi-story building in Dub containing five residential and ten non-residential spaces, alongside four commercial units. In Dobrota and Sutvara, prosecutors laid claim to a 140-square-meter apartment, a residential building with a private swimming pool, and tracts of meadows and forests formally registered to local businesses, associates, and a lawyer.
In the capital of Podgorica, authorities are targeting five apartments—including two duplexes—hidden behind a corporate entity. The remaining properties include 18,113 square meters of land in the Tivat village of Bogišići, and real estate registered to the fugitive’s mother in Herceg Novi.
Rounding out the seizure request are two heavily armored Mercedes G500 SUVs. While formally registered to an associate, prosecutors allege they belong to the crime boss’ illicitly acquired fleet. The prosecution noted its filing contains concrete evidence linking the entire portfolio directly to his criminal activities.
