NSW Crime Commission seizes record $40m from underworld
The state’s most highly secretive crime-fighting agency has snatched a record $40 million in seized assets after chasing down major targets including socialite cocaine trafficker Matthew Doyle.
NSW
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The state’s most highly secretive crime-fighting agency hunting the ill-gotten gains of major targets like socialite cocaine trafficker Matthew Doyle has snatched a record $40 million worth of assets.
The Daily Telegraph has obtained exclusive details of the NSW Crime Commission’s work in the last financial year, peeling back the veil on our most mysterious state agency.
The Commission has two powers in particular which terrify the underworld – they can drag suspected crooks and witnesses into secret hearings to make them cough up evidence or risk going to jail.
Then, once arrests are made, the commission goes to the NSW Supreme Court to restrain cash, cars, boats, homes, gold watches - anything it suspects is the proceeds of crime.
The commission conducted 28 days of the secret coercive hearings over the bedroom execution of a 15-year-old boy in southwest Sydney.
It helped police make 117 arrests and lay 524 charges over drug importations, homicides, terrorism and money laundering.
It lodged 110 restraining orders in the Supreme Court over assets worth an estimated $50 million and $40 million, a new record, was successfully returned to state coffers.
The money will be used to fund new investigations and victim compensation.
The agency’s coercive interview power and virtually non-existent public profile is a comfortable combination for its boss, crime commissioner Peter Cotter, who said the powers had to be applied “fairly and reasonably”.
“It has a lot of mystique around it which is part of its power,” Mr Cotter told The Telegraph. “We interview them, we interrogate them to get to the truth of the matter. We might not get the ‘gotcha moment’ where a guy sits in the box and says ‘you’re too good for me’ but what we do get is … we get timelines.
Where they live, where they put their head down, who their associates are.”
The hearings are especially handy in a murder investigation. “Most of our hearings are actually homicide related. In a drug job, its sort of happening in real time and to have a hearing gives up the game. In murders, it’s happened, we’re investigating them, rounding up all the people who know something or saw something,” Mr Cotter said.
Police Minister David Elliott labelled the commission our “FBI” which he said was a “nice little earner” for the state government.
“It’s a million bucks a week they’re recouping and the community needs to know the money goes back to victims of crime, to fund law enforcement and public education campaigns,” Mr Elliott said.
“I’m calling on (the public) to embrace them as our version of the FBI with the public accolades the FBI does get in the US.”
Matters the commission was most proud of from the last financial year include that which caught Cronulla socialite cocaine smuggler Matthew Doyle and Operation Pinnacle, one of the state’s largest law enforcement operations which rounded up 18 people in an alleged drug syndicate between Dubbo and Sydney.
Doyle pleaded guilty this year to supplying more than 300kg of cocaine and his co-accused Jared Hart and Raoul Kesby pleaded guilty to supplying lesser amounts.
Doyle’s assets were frozen in the Supreme Court in September, including two properties at Burraneer and Caringbah South, shares in 16 companies, a Land Rover, Toyota Hilux and cash.
Those assets will not be included in the $40 million returned to the state this year, as the case has not been finalised.
The commission also played a role in stopping 768 bottles of chilli sauce filled with methamphetamine from being important from the US in October 2019 and the subsequent arrest of three men.