And at the centre of it all is The Grounds co-owner Ramzey ­Choker, a man who likes telling of his triumph over adversity. What follows is the intriguing backstory of massive drug deals and hidden drug money.

It is a tale Mr Choker says was fabricated by a rollover witness, Mr X, who claimed to be one of restaurateur’s best mates.

However, this is the police evidence captured by phone taps and detailed in court transcripts.

AN SOS 

A CALL is made on a disposable mobile phone by a man who knows his time is running out.

“You have to give that thing to mum and dad ASAP, you know what it is,” he says in panicked tones. He is unaware police are listening in, but he knows they are closing in; he would soon delete all the contacts from his mobile, snap the SIM card and dump it with the phone in a bin outside the Hilton.

It is 10.28pm on July 30, 2009, and the man making the call is Mr X, one of Sydney’s most prolific dealers of cocaine and heroin.

The friend on the other end of the line is now one of Sydney’s most acclaimed food identities, Ramzey Choker.

Right now, Mr Choker is one of the only people who can help Mr X — a man who has, Mr X will later claim in court, ­already been holding a large quantity of illegally earned money as a favour for him.

In recent times Mr X has built a seriously luxurious existence from the criminal trade. He also likes the street cred that comes along with being known as a successful drug dealer. It defines him. And he likes people to know it.

“You don’t really get any higher than me unless you’re born into it,” he will later tell the same police, adding he is such a big-shot he only deals in kilograms.

“I never sold a gram in my life.”

But for now, Mr X is done for and he knows it. Police have discovered a drug operation he has been running, with success until this point, from a serviced apartment block near Sydney’s CBD. It ­involves hiding drugs and weapons inside vacant units with the help of a friendly desk clerk.

Earlier that day, police raided one of the apartments. Inside, they seized a relatively modest drug haul given the quantities Mr X usually deals in.

Still, the consequences are serious. Not only did he miss out on selling the 1.23kg of heroin for close to $220,000, but police also found it next to his recently acquired toys: a stick of C4 explosive and two firearms. He’s looking at serious jail time given his criminal history.

He knows he has just hours, maybe minutes to sort things out before he’s arrested. Moving assets out of his name. Making sure money is in the right place.

As police close in, Mr X needs to arrange for cash to be delivered to his family fast so they can clear an outstanding debt with a drug ­dealer. He will later tell a court in evidence Mr Choker was the man to do it. Mr X told the court he had relied on Mr Choker to “invest” about $300,000 of his illegally earned cash in a restaurant. He needed what was left of the money to be delivered to his parents.

Mr Choker had also helped by registering a list of Mr X’s toys in his name, according to Mr X’s evidence in the case.

And in the days after this phone call, Mr X would later tell the court Mr Choker helps him again; this time by hiding Mr X while he is on the run from the police.

Mr Choker was never charged and refused to give a statement to police after Mr X was arrested outside his apartment.

The Sunday Telegraph contacted Mr Choker with 58 questions relating to all of the evidence that Mr X aired in court but he declined to be interviewed.

Instead, his public ­rel­ations spokeswoman issued a statement denying all of the ­evidence.

“The information is incorrect and (Mr Choker) has no comment at all,” the spokeswoman said.

WHO  IS RAMZEY CHOKER?

FLASH forward to 2018. Mr Cho­ker is the acclaimed founder of a thriving cafe empire, The Grounds of Alexandria, which he opened in 2012 on a deeply unfashionable industrial estate. The Grounds vibe is one of controlled grittiness — it’s a little edgy but aesthetically perfect.

If you look at the Instagram feed for The Grounds, and the photos its customers have tagged there, it is curated perfection.

There’s the vintage wooden cart, the hand-painted signs, opulent fruit displays and an onsite mini-farm, complete with stories of the animals, including a pig named Kevin Bacon.

The target market is cashed up and hip. Beautiful people eating beautiful food in front of beautiful things. Mr Choker is busy expanding his empire.

The Grounds of the City, ­inside the Galeries arcade in the Sydney CBD opened in May, featuring a $1 million fitout inspired by the 1920s.

Offshoots have popped up in Chatswood and Warringah Mall, known as Flower Child. Choker has been quoted saying the cafes were part of a plan to reward “young entrepreneurs” by allowing them to run their own cafes.

Keeping it in the family, both are supplied with coffee beans and pastries by The Grounds.

But Flower Child has run into trouble with business records showing that on December 8 the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation lodged an application to wind up the cafes’ parent company, Lucho Trading, which is owned by Christopher James Lu.

The Grounds of Alexandria has also had its problems with administrators being called in after three companies used to run the cafes clocked up almost $2 million in ­unpaid debts and taxes.

Despite its problems, from the outside it has been painted as the quintessential Sydney story: the son of a Lebanese immigrant builds a successful empire catering to the city’s cashed up class.

But according to court documents, the criminal activity of ­others features heavily in the foundations of the story.

FAMILY TIES 

FOR Mr Choker, the story he tells publicly about building his restaurant and coffee empire is one of success in the face of adversity.

In a 2016 interview with SBS, Mr Choker said he lost everything after sinking $2.6 million into his father’s faltering food business. It was an ­attempt to save it from being swallowed by the Global Financial Crisis. Instead, he lost it all and had to start from scratch.

“After two years, (my father) lost the whole business. He (had) built a $100 million empire, and ... we lost everything, and I mean everything,” Mr Choker said in the interview. “We lost houses, cars, everything, we literally had nothing.” It was a low point after an ­idyllic upbringing in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

According to property records, his parents owned a waterfront mansion in Burraneer overlooking Port Hacking that they sold for $4 million in 2005.

In a 2016 interview with Business Insider, he told how the family had a farm in northern NSW, which influenced the look and feel of The Grounds of Alexandria.

Despite the financial setback, Mr Choker told in other interviews of unnamed friends or a “best friend” who lent him up to $600,000 in the following year, which he said he used to start The Grounds of Alexandria on an estate on Huntley St. We never find out who the friends are.

But hidden in the background is another friend, Mr X, who never gets a mention in Mr Choker’s public dialogue.

So how and why did Mr X come into the picture?

Flashback to 2012 and Mr X is in the witness stand of court 3.2 of the Downing Centre District Court on Liverpool St in the Sydney CBD, spilling his guts.

He is trying to save himself from spending a lengthy term behind bars for his drug operation in the apartment blocks.

After police charged him with commercial drug supply and possessing the guns and explosives, Mr X needed to come up with a story, and fast. Sitting in a police station, Mr X told police he could help them with vital information about something unrelated — and it happened to be one of Sydney’s most notorious unsolved crimes.

The case related to the more than $6 million cash that was stolen from armoured cash-in-transit trucks in 2009 by a gang of robbers who used stolen sports cars to make six daring raids across Sydney.

Their weapons of choice ­included AK-47 machine guns and sawn-off shotguns. Only about $500,000 of the stolen money was ever recovered.

And Mr X was right at the centre of it. Eager to crack the case, the police investigating the robberies sat down with Mr X and effectively downloaded his brain about everything he knew. He became the star witness in the marathon 2012 case against four men he said were ­responsible for the robberies.

In exchange, Mr X gets a ­reduced jail sentence for his commercial drug supply charges and immunity for any role he played in the armed robberies with the court suppressing his identity.

But in doing so, he’s throwing Mr Choker, who has never been charged with any offence, under the bus.

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

FROM the witness stand, Mr X explained that he had known Mr Choker since about 2002 and described the restaurateur as “one of my closest friends”.

The pair were so close that Mr X told the court he “invested” somewhere ­between $200,000 to $300,000 with Mr Choker in 2008 or 2009 — around the time the restaurateur opened an eatery, known as Bacco, in one of the most sought after locations in the Sydney CBD.

This was about three to four years before Mr Choker established The Grounds. Bacco was a stylish Italian wine bar and patisserie, ­located in the lobby of the grand­iose Chifley Tower in the heart of Sydney’s financial district.

Mr X claimed from the witness stand that the money he invested with Mr Choker was his earnings from drug sales.

“Most of the money I ever had was owed back to my suppliers,” Mr X told the police in his statement.

However, when it came to his profits, Mr X told the officers he had a simple solution: “I kept mine with Ramzey.”

As the case went on, the defence lawyers attacked Mr X on the ­theory that his seemingly limitless supply of cash could be explained because he was responsible for the armed robberies and that he had wrongfully accused the four men on trial to save his own skin.

But to do so, he had to expose Mr Choker and his other mates. Not that he cared.

Asked if he was trying to look after his friends by lying in his ­evidence, Mr X said it was the ­opposite.

“Whether the police have charged them for whatever that’s not my problem, I just told (the police)  what  happened,” he told the court.

It then became a question of whether the hundreds of thousands of dollars Mr X told the court he invested with Mr Choker was from drug dealing or the armed rob­beries. Mr X strongly insisted it was from drug dealing and that he earned the money before the robberies had occurred. As the case progressed, Mr X also told the jury that he registered his $130,000 Audi and $50,000 Mustang cruiser boat in Mr Choker’s name to prevent the authorities from seizing them as proceeds of crime.

After police discovered the drug operation, Mr X gave evidence that Mr Choker helped him go on the run, first in hotels and then in his apartment.

Mr Choker was never charged and the court heard he refused to give a statement to police and was not called to give evidence in the trial.

THE MONEY,  RAMZEY AND BACCO

IT’S just after 1pm on a weekday in 2009 and Ramzey Choker is buzzing around the tables of Bacco, the eatery he opened inside the stately Chifley Tower in the Sydney CBD.

Since opening, the stylish wine bar and patisserie’s reputation has travelled.

That same week in 2009, Mr Choker received a call from one of his “investors”.

It was Mr X.

Police were secretly recording the call and it later became evidence in the armed robbery case.

“Look mate, it’s almost June,” Mr X said to Mr Choker on the call, which was played to the court.

Mr X explained the context of the call while giving evidence in the trial: he had lent Mr Choker ­between $200,000 and $300,000 and the time was fast approaching for him to be compensated.

Later, Mr X still had not been reimbursed and put in another call, which was also intercepted by police and played to the jury in the trial.

Mr Choker had better news this time and told Mr X: “Don’t worry, you know you’re going to get a big reward.”

Mr X gave evidence that Mr Choker said he had found a buyer who was going to pay $2.6 million for his eatery.

Mr X told the court that the arrangement was “once he sells that restaurant, he will pay me back the money”.

Mr Choker’s business was flourishing and the sale was close to being finalised.

In the 2016 interview with SBS, Mr Choker said he put $2.6 million into his father’s business after the Bacco sale.

Mr X told the court he was happy to admit the money he had with Mr Choker was the proceeds of crime.

He told the court it was from the sale of heroin and cocaine, ­explaining: “Well, I’ve been a drug dealer all my life.”

Between 2007 and 2008, Mr X estimated he made somewhere between $300,000 to $500,000 from drug sales, the court heard.

The dates became a major issue in the trial with defence barristers putting it to Mr X that the reason he was so flush with cash was ­because it was actually him that was responsible for the armed robberies in 2009. The lawyers put it to Mr X that he was living it up on his slice of the $6 million. Mr X strongly denied this, insisting he earned the money before the robberies from drug sales. The arrangement with Mr Choker suited Mr X because it prevented the cops from confiscating his money using proceeds of crime laws, which put the onus on the crooks to prove their assets are legally obtained.

That’s why every smart crook needs a loyal friend to hold their assets. In Mr X’s case, he gave evidence that Mr Cho­ker was one of his “closest friends”.

He told the court there were “only a handful of people I would have trusted” to hold that much of his cash and that he treated Mr Choker like a bank.

“He had, say, the $300,000. If I wanted that back he couldn’t give it to me, but say I needed, say $5000, $10,000 max, he could organise that.” Any withdrawals were deduc­ted from the $300,000. That trust extended to other assets bought with proceeds of crime, Mr X told the court.

THE TOYS 

MR X loved his sleek blue Audi RS4, but it was too risky to hold it in his own name, so he transferred the $100,000 vehicle into Mr Choker’s name on December 30, 2008, according to the registration documents tendered to the court.

At 10.30am on May 13, 2009, the Audi was pulled over by police and Mr Choker was ­inside with Mr X’s brothers, ­according to evidence in the case. Asked by the officer who owned the car, the men said they didn’t know. Mr X ­explained in his police statement: “The car was registered in (Mr Choker’s) name so I could justify how I paid for it.

“If I had a car worth a hundred and forty in my name how could I afford that?

“Whereas (Mr Choker) could justify having that sort of money in a car,” Mr X told the police. Mr X claimed he paid $14 for the Audi.

He used two $7 bags of glucose to stretch 2.5kg of heroin to 3kg and got the buyer to throw in the car to cover the extra 500g. Likewise, Mr X told the court he put a 28ft Mustang cruiser in Mr Choker’s name. He bought it from an accused arms dealer for $50,000 in 2009, mainly because he felt a big shot like him should own a boat.

POLICE TAPS 

WHEN a criminal’s entire life is phone-tapped, a police officer has to listen to every call, no matter how tedious.

Mr X, for example, spent countless hours talking about prostitutes, his ­affairs, his steroid purchases, his real estate frustrations, all poured out to his sympathetic friend, Ramzey Choker.

The court documents show police recorded them all and it put Mr Choker on their radar.

There was Mr X talking to Mr Choker about cheating on his wife with a mistress and a stable of prostitutes, Mr X ­telling Mr Choker about his stockpiles of steroids, Mr X ­telling Mr Choker about ­missing  out  on  an  apartment in ­Circular Quay. Police heard it all.

On July 17, 2009, Mr X made another boastful claim to Mr Choker that he had been building up the stocks of his “roid box”, which was now “huge”.

Mr X told the court a series of the calls revealed he had ­invested up to $300,000 with Mr Choker in Bacco.

The final tapped call was on July 30, 2009, when Mr X was recorded calling Mr Choker to tell the restaurateur to get the money to his parents ASAP after police had found the ­heroin and weapon stash in the serviced apartment.