Haddara crime family’s ruthless hold on Melbourne goes up in flames as the tobacco wars hit home

Early one morning in November, crime boss Fadi Haddara woke to learn his pride and joy was burning.

The Karizma restaurant in Docklands had been destroyed in a firebombing, the second time in three days someone had dared attack the jewel in the crown of his family’s legitimate businesses.

Such an attack on the Haddaras and their allies was inconceivable even a year prior, when the family held a seemingly unassailable position in Melbourne’s underworld, controlling a sprawling criminal empire built over more than a decade on the profits of illicit tobacco and drugs – and protected by a feared name.

Now the family’s fortunes were in flames.

Numerous tobacco shops they once controlled had been torched, along with the millions in profits they brought from the sale of illegal cigarettes. Within weeks, a host of other businesses connected to the family would also be reduced to ashes.

Word on the street was that Fadi himself was in the gun, with a bounty out on his head. The Haddaras were at war and the challenger was an old enemy who was emerging as a powerful and ruthless new threat – Kazem “Kaz” Hamad.

After being released from prison in mid-2023 and deported to his native Iraq, Hamad has waged a turf war against the Haddara family for control of the illicit tobacco trade. He is suspected of ordering a series of shooting and firebombing attacks to settle old scores with enemies in Melbourne’s underworld.

Hamad, who has also assumed control of one of Australia’s most lucrative drug trafficking networks from his sanctuary in the Middle East, has been able to underwrite his war with illicit money and a knack for recruiting street soldiers prepared to commit acts of extreme violence.

And it appears Hamad is winning.

Kazem “Kaz” Hamad in about 2015.

Police and underworld sources say the Haddara crime family, which has dominated the illicit tobacco market in Victoria for well over a decade, is now “backed into a corner” after a sustained firebombing campaign waged against its tobacco shops and legitimate businesses.

This masthead gathered information from more than half a dozen underworld and police sources, court hearings and other records to compile this story, along with an extensive analysis to identify violent incidents connected to the tobacco wars and calculate the profits obtained by organised crime groups.

The Age has identified at least 60 violent incidents suspected of being related to Hamad’s underworld campaign, including at least 52 arson attacks, two murders, two non-fatal shootings, and numerous standover extortion attempts.

A police intelligence summary, released in a court proceeding last week, described the Hamad syndicate as being involved in “extreme acts of violence up to and including murder” in its violent feuds with the Haddara family and the remnants of the crime gang run by jailed boss George Marrogi.

“That is being driven by historic incidents and for control of the Melbourne and the wider Victorian illicit tobacco market,” it read.

The outbreak of serious violence has forced state and federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on both syndicates, executing 70 warrants on tobacconists statewide and arresting and charging 20 players embroiled in the “tobacco war” rackets since October.

This includes a man suspected of being a key Hamad lieutenant, several senior members of the Haddara family, and a number of suspected arsonists-for-hire and enforcers allegedly recruited from outlaw motorcycle clubs and street gangs.

Victoria Police has launched a special squad to deal with the worsening violence, Taskforce Lunar, which is investigating dozens of fires at tobacco shops, restaurants and other businesses, as well as Hamad’s suspected involvement in vendetta-style attacks against long-time enemies, including the attempted theft and desecration of the corpse of a despised rival.

“We feel we’re having an impact in terms of disrupting, charging, and putting people before the courts that we know are involved,” Victoria Police Detective Superintendent Jason Kelly said.

“We don’t apologise for the fact that we focus on individuals. Certain individuals at the moment would be considering their options. But some of these are career criminals, so we don’t expect them to hand the keys in.”

Power of the day

For more than a decade, illicit tobacco has been synonymous with the Haddara name.

The crime family, based in Melbourne’s west, started dabbling in the black market tobacco trade in the early 2000s by doing cigarette rips at suburban petrol stations and supermarkets.

Alleged crime boss Fadi Haddara leaving Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. Credit: Jason South

By 2013, they were implicated in some of the largest tobacco busts in Australia, including the importation of three shipping containers loaded with thousands of boxes of cigarettes and frozen tobacco declared in customs as lathes, instant noodles and okra (the vegetable). A year later, they were identified as being behind the importation of 30 million cigarettes into Australia.

The focus of the Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police on immigration, counterterrorism and drug smuggling meant the Haddaras were able to establish themselves as one of the largest illicit tobacco syndicates in Victoria and continue to operate in the shadows while the agencies focused on other priorities.

Over more than a decade, they continued to flood the market with illegal imported cigarettes and sold through a network of tobacco shops dotted across Melbourne’s suburbs operated by relatives and associates.

Most recently, police intelligence linked the syndicate to a shipment of cigarettes worth $40 million which authorities intercepted in February 2022. A member of the Haddara family had also been linked to the theft of more than $7 million worth of cigarettes a year earlier.

Police believe the syndicate has been involved in drug trafficking, gun violence, extortion rackets, money laundering and other violent crimes.

The tobacco importations have been facilitated by the Haddaras’ deep family and business ties in their native Lebanon, where they have parked a small fortune of their ill-gotten gains. They have also leveraged their connections within Australian organised crime to use powerful bikie gangs as muscle.

The syndicate is allegedly controlled by 45-year-old Fadi Haddara, a hands-on ruler who attracted the attention of police over a fight with a tobacconist in 2022.

Photos of syndicate members posted on social media show them dancing at lavish parties, driving luxury cars and posing with well-known Melbourne underworld identities.

But underworld and police sources say Hamad’s relentless campaign against the Haddaras has pushed their back against the wall and led to associates defecting to other groups.

Luxury vehicles at the home of one of the Haddara syndicate members.Credit: Instagram

Fadi Haddara was approached via his lawyer but declined to comment.

Hamad, whose current whereabouts are unknown, could not be reached for comment.

The war starts

Police won’t call the widespread outbreak of violence since 2023 an “underworld war”, but authorities date the start of the current conflict to late March of that year.

It marked the first of what Victoria Police says is an escalating wave of related firebombings in metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria targeting tobacco shops.

Soaring government taxes on tobacco have led to an explosion in the availability of cheap cigarettes smuggled into the country and distributed through neighbourhood convenience stores and specialist tobacco retailers. This has been further driven by a growing demand for vapes, which remain largely unregulated.

The profits available for organised criminals are astronomical.

“These syndicates can make millions and millions of dollars per container imported into Australia. That’s probably one of the reasons why we’ve got the current situation here in Victoria. It is a very lucrative market,” said Penny Spies, commander of the Australian Border Force’s illicit tobacco taskforce.

“I would suggest that what the syndicates are doing is flooding the border with the hope to get it through. They can lose a significant number of containers and get one through and still make a profit.”

Figures from the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission suggest only 1 in 30 containers needs to make it through the border for a smuggling syndicate to make a profit. The ABF only checks about 1 per cent of containers coming in through the ports. These are targeted searches based on intelligence.

How much the syndicates make is impossible to know, since the quantity of tobacco successfully smuggled into the country for sale can’t be quantified.

A conservative analysis conducted by The Age suggests that Australia-wide, the smuggling syndicates have lost about $750 million in profit after the ABF seized 2.5 billion cigarettes since July 2022.

Victoria is the only remaining jurisdiction in Australia without a tobacco licensing scheme, which means there are no firm numbers on how many tobacco shops are operating in the state. However, estimates suggest hundreds may have opened in the past five years.

Illicit cigarettes imported to Australia from overseas intercepted by Australian Border Force.

“Some are owned or operated by the syndicates, some are targeted for extortion. Some might be taken over or burnt out because the syndicate controls that area, or wants to open their own store,” Kelly said.

Law enforcement agencies are growing increasingly frustrated with the state’s lax tobacco regulations – no licence is required to sell tobacco in Victoria – which some believe has contributed to turning Melbourne into the Switzerland of organised crime.

The Victorian government is reviewing regulation advice from former commissioner for better regulation Anna Cronin, after the spate of firebombings last year caught it off guard and scrambling for a response two years after commissioning the report.

“There have been a number of significant changes since the report was provided, including the Commonwealth government’s ban on the importation of vaping products,” a state government spokesperson said.

It is not clear when the review will be finalised, but any legislative changes to tobacco regulations are unlikely to come into effect before the end of the year.

The federal government has also tipped in $188 million to help Border Force to ramp up its efforts to cut off the supply of illegal tobacco at the border.

In the meantime, many of the operators have been presented with a dire choice: Sell illicit tobacco from one of the syndicates and pay a “tax” of $2000 a month – or else.

In one instance detailed in court, a member of the Haddara family was put on the phone with Hamad, who allegedly told him he was operating on his turf, and to pay $500 a week or face the consequences.

Mohammed “Afghan Ali” Akbar Keshtiar.

“No one comes and opens a [tobacco] shop here,” Hamad allegedly told the shop owner.

When the owner refused to pay the tax, Hamad allegedly responded: “We’ll see soon what happens”.

The shop was torched two weeks later. The fire brigade stopped the blaze from spreading to a block of apartments above it.

Police now estimate about half of Victoria’s 800 to 1000 tobacconists are suspected of having been infiltrated by criminal groups.

The murder of Mohammed “Afghan Ali” Akbar Keshtiar, who was deeply involved in the tobacco trade and closely connected to the Haddaras, is just one of the violent incidents that have been linked by underworld sources to the worsening attacks by Hamad’s crew.

Kazem Hamad (left) and Toby Mitchell.Credit: Instagram

Another was the shooting death of underworld figure Robert Issa in a Craigieburn shopping centre car park, who underworld sources say attempted to muscle his way into the extortion racket.

Police are investigating both for potential links to the so-called “tobacco wars”.

But what began as a tit-for-tat turf war has become a one-sided affair as Hamad and his criminal gang have threatened, burnt out, or gunned down their rivals, to emerge as the dominant force in the black market.

It’s not just business, it’s personal

But it’s not just players in the illicit tobacco market that are finding themselves at the receiving end of a Molotov cocktail or a drive-by shooting.

“We know that those two syndicates are in conflict with each other. We know that there are some personal vendettas and angst between the two groups and the two leaders in the two groups,” Kelly said, noting this goes beyond just fighting over the tobacco trade.

Underworld sources say Hamad has reignited dormant vendettas against former associates and long-time enemies who committed some kind of transgression that he’s now in a position to punish.

An investigator on the scene where a car was burnt out and shots allegedly fired at a home in Fawkner with links to crime figure Mohammed Charif Oueida.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Hamad is suspected of ordering a shooting of the suburban family home of underworld figure Mohammed Charif Oueida in December.

Underworld sources say Oueida was targeted because of his suspected involvement in a years-old plot to smear Hamad’s name.

In 2019, Hamad had arranged to hand over to authorities a stash of military weaponry, including a machine gun and hand grenade, that had been planted in a Campbellfield drain in exchange for a sentencing discount after he was convicted of drug trafficking.

Sensing an opportunity for revenge, Oueida and the late sister and business partner of Notorious Crime Family boss Marrogi, Meshilin, spread fake court documents falsely slurring Hamad as an informer.

This is what led – more than four years later – to the shooting at Oueida’s house and the unprecedented attempt in July to steal Meshilin’s body from a Melbourne cemetery.

Mystery also surrounds the death threats and firebombing attacks directed at former Mongols bikie turned boxer Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim.

Last week, two function venues due to host events involving Abdulrahim were firebombed.

While the man nicknamed “The Punisher” has no shortage of enemies, Taskforce Lunar is probing the fires, a supposed murder contract on the head of Abdulrahim, and whether the attacks could have anything to do with a raging hatred between him and Hamad.

Hamad’s best mate, Kadir Ors, was murdered by Marrogi in a Campbellfield carpark in September 2016. In Maroggi’s appeal, the court said “we consider that the evidence established that [Marrogi] was connected to Abdulrahim, and that Abdulrahim had the capacity to alert the applicant to Ors’ whereabouts on the day he was shot”.

Whether Hamad is now collecting on this blood debt remains to be seen.

Endgame

Authorities are facing a daunting task when it comes to stopping the violence and reversing the wholesale infiltration of the tobacco market by organised crime.

Hamad himself is something of an unprecedented threat in Melbourne’s underworld.

In Iraq and out of reach of both enemies and law enforcement, the gang boss has access to vast resources and is prepared to cross lines.

Hamad soldiers and lieutenants are lavishly rewarded for their loyalty, including with access to top-notch lawyers for those who get arrested. Last week, a key figure police have called Hamad’s “regional operations manager” was picked up from prison in a Rolls-Royce Ghost.

A Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce outside the Melbourne Assessment Prison as they waited for a Hamad syndicate lieutenant to leave on bail.Credit: Jason South

The lieutenant, who was accompanied by an entourage of associates dressed in designer activewear, was grinning from ear to ear as he told the media to “get f-—d” and slammed the door of the luxury car shut before roaring down Spencer Street escorted by a $600,000 Lamborghini.

The show of power has been interpreted by law enforcement as a blatant “f--- you” to authorities and the court system, police sources say.

Melbourne’s underworld players are terrified of Hamad and the lengths he will go to control his business interests and settle old scores.

Police say the violence has started to drive some players out of the gangland world and led to the fracturing of long-standing alliances among his enemies.

Kelly said Victoria Police could ultimately seek Hamad’s extradition to Australia to face charges over the chaos that has engulfed Melbourne.

However, it is unclear how successful an extradition attempt would be. Hamad is an Iraqi citizen and does not have Australian citizenship.

“The endgame is to disrupt the syndicate and then hold him to account for crimes he’s committed here in Victoria and Australia. Anyone who commits crimes in this state should be held to account,” Kelly said.

“But in the interim, we will target anyone onshore that we can.”

In the meantime, Kelly issued a message to those taking advantage of the plethora of cheap illicit tobacco on offer.

“Don’t put the money in the pockets of organised crime. If you go and buy those illicit cigarettes, you’ve paid for a shooting, you’ve paid for a fire, you’ve paid for someone to die from a drug overdose. It is that simple,” he said.

Early on Tuesday, Phoenicia Reception centre in Brunswick was torched. Victoria Police said Lunar taskforce detectives, probing the illicit tobacco trade, are investigating the fire.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.