The murder was the seventh in a three-decades-long blood feud between two families in Albania. The feud began in 1997 after a row over an unpaid £15 petrol bill led to the killing of one of Nikulaj's family members. The man accused of masterminding the murder is a British-based member of an Albanian family who believed Nikulaj had shot one of their relatives 26 years earlier.
Saraiva was allegedly aided by a four-strong UK hit squad who acted as his surveillance team, including a young mother from Bristol. The British gang was selected because Nikulaj was on alert for local assassins but would not have suspected danger from visitors from England. Saraiva lay in wait in a nearby apartment block stairwell for several days while other Britons checked into Nikulaj's Coral hotel in Shengjin, Albania, posing as tourists to spy on him and his family before ordering the gunman to strike.
Saraiva and his alleged accomplices are suspected of being offered a share of up to £1 million by other, unidentified figures who are believed to have bankrolled the operation from the UK. Saraiva fled on a waiting motorbike after the shooting. Nikulaj's wife rushed down from their apartment two floors above the hotel bar to find staff screaming over her husband, who was slumped dead in his seat.
This week, Saraiva stood in a glass-fronted dock in an Albanian court, a few feet from Nikulaj's wife, and was jailed for life without parole after being found guilty of premeditated murder in collaboration with others. According to the Daily Mail, Ruben Saraiva described his treatment as unacceptable.