THE Gold Coast is usurping Sydney as Australia’s great drug frontier as crims and lawyers head north to cash in.
Fuelled by an increased demand for MDMA, cocaine and ice (methamphetamine) in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games, Sydney crime organisations are now operating “chapters” or “branches” out of the Gold Coast in their biggest ever numbers, with the Surfers Paradise party strip dubbed “ground zero” for a drug boom.
Violent crimes, too, are on the rise with the Gold Coast rivalling the Sydney CBD for assaults on a Saturday night.
As a result, Sydney’s top lawyers are also beating a path to the Gold Coast and opening offices on the Glitter Strip to cater for the transfer in criminal activity.
Top Sydney criminal brass Ahmed Dib, who specialises in organised crime, recently opened a four-man outpost of his Sydney firm Havas & Dib opposite the Gold Coast Courthouse in Southport after getting “tired of constant return trips” to the party town to represent Sydney identities charged in Queensland.
He now says the office is his biggest money-spinner and pulls in bigger and more significant cases than his head office in Sydney.
“There is just an abundant amount of work here,” says Dib, who says Gold Coast drug supply and trafficking cases make up the majority of his new workload.
“Our Sydney office consists of a variety of cases but the Gold Coast office is showing a pattern whereby a large majority of our matters are being heard in the district and supreme courts.”
One of Dib’s first Queensland cases saw him represent long-time Sydney crime figure Ronnie Refalo, who was sentenced to five years and eight months prison in a Queensland prison for his role in a drug trafficking syndicate.
Another, former Sydney Comanchero associate, Chris Duspara, will soon face a Gold Coast court accused of an alleged role in a major cocaine trafficking case, while high-profile client, former Sydney panelbeater Jaymin Higham, was also charged in relation to the alleged ring.
Dib attributes the demise of the Kings Cross party scene and the lure of cheap accommodation and famed night-life for the rise of the Gold Coast as a drug haven.
He says the approach of the Commonwealth Games is also acting as a lure for the Sydney crowd and subsequent drug trade.
“Events like the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games are always big magnet for people who like to party,” says Dib, the son of well-known former Gold Coast hairdressing tycoon Michael Dib.
“I anticipate drug activity will increase around that time and remain very high.”
A Sydney police source described the Gold Coast drug trade as “thriving as much as the Cross at its peak” and said Gold Coast police had a two-fold problem on their hands.
“People are going up there to run the gear and people, then there are people who are re-establishing themselves,” he said.
Once household names in Sydney’s underbelly who have made the move to the Gold Coast include Ray Frangieh, a convicted cocaine dealer in NSW who started a new law-abiding life as a nightclub operator in Surfers Paradise last year.
In December he had assets, including his $1.2 million Mermaid Waters home frozen by the Supreme Court.
Murdered ex-bikie Ricky Ciano had also relocated to the Gold Coast prior to his death last year. He had flown into Sydney from the Gold Coast on February 11 and his body, stripped down to only his underwear and shoes or socks, was found sprawled on the back seat of a BMW M3 on the outskirts of Oberon in the NSW Central Tablelands.
Members of outlaw motorcycle gangs who are opting out of the combative world of Sydney gang warfare in favour of the area are making highly-publicised inroads into the Gold Coast crime scene.
And unlike years past when bikies would congregate in lavish clubhouses on sprawling estates, they now run their business operations out of luxury high-rise apartments which dot the coastline from Surfers Paradise to Burleigh Heads.
Their migration north is a no brainier says Sydney criminal lawyer Rick Korn. He says bikies are leaving NSW in droves.
READ MORE ABOUT SYDNEY BIKIES
► CHAPTER ONE: Inside the squad that beat Sydney’s gangs
► CHAPTER TWO: The real-life police fight club
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