Four year probe fails to prove top law enforcer was Mafia mole

A secret four-year investigation into whether a top Australian law enforcer was an Italian Mafia mole has handed down its findings.

Stills from Italian state video of police arresting 163 alleged members of Notorious Italian Mafia Gang 'Ndrangheta.

A top federal law enforcer was suspected of “providing tip offs” to Italian organised crime, the same group he was tasked with investigating for most of their extensive career.

But the alleged Mafia mole has been allowed to quietly retire, after a covert four-year multi-agency investigation was unable to substantiate corruption allegations and instead charged him with misconduct.

According to a secret “final report” handed to federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on June 30, 2023, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI), first launched a probe in 2015 after another police agency identified the law enforcer meeting with suspected senior Mafia figures.

It is understood ACLEI, tasked with weeding out corruption, was joined by three other law enforcement agencies including the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and a state police force in a covert investigation dubbed Operation Imperial.

Attorney-General and Cabinet Secretary Mark Dreyfus at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The task force found the law enforcer had displayed “selective or under-reporting” of a relationship he had with the suspected criminal entity, the ’Ndrangheta mafia in Australia, that created “a significant corruption risk”.

Some of those identities operated across multiple states and were suspected of large-scale drug trafficking and money laundering at the direction of figures in Calabria.

But it could not prove corrupt conduct, specifically listed as “providing tip offs to a criminal entity about law enforcement activity” and instead he was given a formal warning about his failure to declare human sources and conflicts of interest.

However in 2018 and again in 2019 evidence of misconduct was referred back to law enforcement agencies including his own when he was again spotted in a restaurant with senior criminal suspects.

Police in Italy arresting dozens of alleged members of notorious Italian Mafia gang 'Ndrangheta, many linked to Australia.

A probe has now found he had breached the Australian Public Service code of conduct on six occasions. He retired a short time later and now works for another Commonwealth agency.

ACLEI has since been subsumed into a newly created corruption watchdog body, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

A NACC spokesman confirmed the corruption probe had now been concluded.

“As this matter was finalised prior to the commencement of the National Anti-Corruption Commission on 1 July 2023, this investigation was not carried over into the NACC and this is all the information we are able to provide,” they said.

It is understood the same officer was stood down more than two decades ago for the same offences of consorting with high-level Mafia identities where he was accused of pushing his way into cases and/or asking for information not related to cases he was working on.

The case was dropped back then after he declared the consorting was part of undercover intelligence gathering and nothing could be proven otherwise. Federal law and intelligence agencies were reportedly left stunned by the unexplained “failure” of some of their cases at that time.

It is understood the former officer’s career spans numerous law enforcement agencies including as far back as providing analysis into the 1989 assassination of AFP assistant commissioner Colin Winchester.