Crim City podcast: How the gangland murder of a Comanchero at Bondi Junction hurt Westfield sales

There have been five high-profile shootings across Sydney recently, but none had impacted on the sales at Westfield shopping centres – until the alleged murder of Alen Moradian. Listen to episode two of Crim City here.

A photo from Alen Moradian’s funeral. His Bondi Junction shooting rocked the Eastern Suburbs.

There have been five high-profile shootings since the last series of the CrimCity podcast, but none had impacted on the sales at Westfield shopping centres – until the alleged murder of Alen Moradian.

The Daily Telegraph’s crime editor Mark Morri has revealed that shop attendant’s in the Bondi Junction shopping mecca noticed a downturn in sales in the days after the Comanchero bikie boss was gunned down in June.

“That’s when Sydney all of a sudden gets really worried (about the gang war), because it’s in the eastern suburbs,” Morri said on the latest episode.

“There were people too scared to go to the Bondi Junction shopping centre.

Listen to season two of the Crim City podcast here:

“My son’s girlfriend works in a shop up there and she said for the next two days it was empty.”

Moradian’s death is arguably the most shocking of the gang war that has raged since 2020, largely because of his links to some of the country’s most high-profile criminals and his standing in the underworld.

Episode two of the new series of CrimCity sees Morri and chief reporter Josh Hanrahan dissect the latest violence on the streets of Sydney, from the death of Moradian to the Marrickville barber shop shooting, multiple attacks at Greenacre – including the shooting of lawyer Mahmoud Abbas – and the death of Ferenc Stemler at Campsie.

CrimCity podcast is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.