Serial killer Abuzar Sultani was a control freak who demanded obedience

Gangland killer Abuzar Sultani demanded complete control over his subordinates to the extent he would dictate how they would relieve themselves.

The members of Abuzar Sultani’s gang sat down to urinate -- on his orders.

Sultani demanded control. And that is the degree to which he exercised it over his underlings.

Those in the gang obeyed out of fear because they knew violent discipline would follow as a consequence of not following Sultani’s rules.

The 32-year-old was fanatical about cleanliness. And anyone who came into the Sydney Olympic Park headquarters had to maintain it to Sultani’s standards.

One thing he would not tolerate was unsightly spray left on the toilet seat or floor.

As a result, muscular outlaw motorcycle gang members sat down when they used Sultani’s toilet.

Abuzar Sultani, who has been sentenced to three life terms in prison ordered total loyalty from his henchmen.

It was just one of the extreme factors that contributed to the makeup of Sultani’s character.

Much of it was linked to his strict following of the Muslim faith.

He did not drink. He didn’t do drugs. There was no girlfriend on the scene.

Even the food Sultani ate followed a strict regime. And so his gang members were forced to follow suit.
If someone was eating food that did not adhere to Sultani’s guidelines, they were not allowed to sit near him.

When the gang went to McDonald‘s they were only allowed to eat the Filet-o-Fish burger.

The reason being that the other burgers were cooked on the grill and exposed to pork products used on other items from the menu.

Anyone that came near Sultani had to use hand sanitiser -- and this was in pre-COVID-19 days.

Abuzar Sultani lived a strict, ordered life.

Sultani will never see life outside of a prison again.

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Sultani’s underlings knew him by a number of nicknames -- many of them demonstrated that he was at the top of the hierarchy of their criminal group.

There was “Boss”, “Bossman”, “Bruce” or “Wayne”. Sometimes it was just “Abs” or “Abz”.

Sultani’s leadership style was to demand obedience without question. He ruled his crew through the threat of violence and his organisation did not resemble a democracy.

He organised and gave the orders for everything. All the money earned from criminal activity went to Sultani who decided how it would be distributed.

One member who tried to leave was met personally by Sultani to convince him to stay because he was performing well. During the conversation, Sultani was holding a gun wrapped in a tea towel.

The man told police that Sultani said “I had pissed him off so much he could knock me, but I hadn’t given him a good enough reason yet.”

Sultani’s interview with Dr Neilson contained the assertion that he had become “desensitised” to carrying out murders.

Sultani has become desensitised to carrying out murders.

Sultani’s character makeup was unusual given his background did not include the usual checklist for violent criminals.

There was no suggestion of social deprivation, no violence or alcohol abuse associated with anyone involved in his upbringing.

In fact, his family life appeared to be quite normal.

His parents were relatively affluent and lived in a nice home in Merrylands.

In an October interview with a prison psychiatrist, Sultani said his parents fled Afghanistan in 1986 because of Russian occupation and he grew up in public housing at Westmead.

Sultani said his father was a mechanical engineer in Afghanistan but couldn’t find work in Australia so drove cabs and opened an Afghani bread shop before dying in 2017 from a kidney condition.

Sultani was born in Western Sydney in January 1989.

He went to school at Parramatta High School and went on to study at Macquarie University.

After initially dropping out of high school in 2007, Sultani, who had a natural gift for numbers, later completed his HSC where he got a score in the 70s, although he felt he underachieved.

In jail, he plays squash, trains and wants to complete a doctorate.

“He is clearly an intelligent person – but has misused that intelligence, his education to become the leader of a well organised criminal network,” Crown Prosecutor David Patch wrote about Sultani in his sentencing submissions.

Violence became a cornerstone of Sultani’s existence.

It was a way of life he learnt early in his criminal career during his time as a bikie.

ABZ THE BIKIE

Inside the bathroom of a Western Sydney safe house, a prospective Rebels bikie gang member kneels down and prepares to have his head blown off.

It was 2014 and the bikie applicant was at the house hoping to be awarded his club colours, making him a fully fledged member.

But things had taken a turn for the worse for him.

“Who have you been talking shit to about us?” a senior bikie allegedly said as he pointed the gun at the prospective member. “Bullshit, get out of the bath and kneel down with your head over the edge of the bathtub.”

Abuzar Sultani was a member of the Rebels bikie gang. Picture: Milnes

The man obeyed the command and prepared to die.

Sultani, who at that stage was a senior member of the Rebels, entered the bathroom.

“You’ve got your colours!” Sultani allegedly yelled to the man in a congratulatory tone.

The fact that the man did not beg for his life was the final test he needed to pass to be accepted as a member of the Rebels.

This is the culture that helped shape Abuzar Sultani.

His hit squad had its origins in the Rebels Outlaw Motorcycle gang.

Sultani allegedly joined the Rebels in about 2012. He would have been in his early 20s.

He met several influential gang members in 2009 while he was behind bars for a break and enter.

Sultani had been serving the sentence over a failed attempt to steam an ATM at Glenmore in 2007 that he committed as a teenager.

Sultani was still completing his HSC during the case and applied for bail so he could attend to his studies.

Abuzar Sultani's student card for Macquarie University where he completed a commerce degree.

When he got out of jail in 2009, Sultani allegedly set about establishing himself as a drug dealer.

He would allegedly send his drug sellers into the apartments of rival drug dealers in Redfern to shut them down and claim their territory.

By 2013, Sultani’s criminal group was beginning to take shape. And in 2014 to at least 2015, it operated under the banner of the Burwood Chapter of the Rebels.

Sultani originally joined the Sydney City Chapter of the Rebels and rose to become the president of the gang’s Burwood Chapter.

Soon after, Sultani’s chapter ditched the Rebels banner -- so as not to attract police attention.

But they still operated in a similar hierarchical fashion as the bikie gang, with Sultani as its leader.

Sultani told the prison psychiatrist he became frustrated with the Rebels’ culture and said it operated like “a Ponzi scheme”.

“As soon as you started doing alright people would turn up and want their cut,“ Sultani said. “I like to work and like to earn … not ask for a free lunch like the others.”

Sultani's uni degree – he studied under the name Adam Sultan

Sultani even paid $50,000 to establish a BlackBerry server so each member of the group could receive his interactions on an encrypted phone.

He carried six BlackBerry phones at the same time. Each one was used to communicate with different criminals across various organisations.

To provide a legitimate mask for the money earned from their criminal activities, Sultani operated a number of companies.

These included Civic Traffic Group and Labour and State Wide Traffic Group, which were registered under the names of dummy directors.

Sultani also owned a 32 per cent stake in the hamburger and kebab restaurant, Westside Grill, located on Great Western Hwy in St Marys.

He dropped into the restaurant site briefly while on the way to murder Michael Davey on March 29, 2016.

The business front structure was possible thanks to Sultani’s education and his experience in the finance world.

THE FINANCE GUY

Sultani was smart enough to earn a university degree, but his criminal record and violent nature posed a problem for him when it came to getting a job.

After finishing a commerce degree at Macquarie University in April 2015, Sultani found it difficult to get work.

With his criminal record, all but a few prospective employers were willing to take a chance on him.

By the time Sultani was arrested in 2016, he was part way through a Masters of Business Administration at the same university.

The answer to Sultani’s employment problem was Burwood construction identity George Alex.

Alex, whose links to organised crime have been documented in several court cases, is currently facing charges of leading a $17 million tax fraud scheme. He is set to fight the charges when the matter goes to trial.

Abuzar Sultani was employed by Burwood construction identity George Alex.

Joe Anton introduced Sultani to George Alex. He was murdered in December, 2013.

Sultani met Alex in 2010 through Alex’s then business partner, stand over man and construction identity Joe Antoun.

Soon after, Sultani was employed by Alex and was working in a financial role for his company, Active Labour.

Alex paid Sultani $1000 a week to have the former’s businesses registered in his name, court documents said.

Antoun was murdered in December 2013 and, prior to that, Sultani viewed him as a mentor.

When Alex was the subject of a bankruptcy examination in 2014, Sydney businessman Jim

Byrnes told the Federal Court that Sultani was in charge of Alex’s “tax minimisation” work.

“I know who he is. He is a very dangerous person…,” Mr Byrnes told the court. “ … So he’s smart enough to be able to administer George’s tax minimisation or tax dealing structures. He runs those.”

Mr Byrnes told the court Sultani “stands over” people when they get behind on payments to Alex.

Earlier in 2010, Sultani was working for Sydney liquidation firm Cor Cordis.

The company performed the liquidations on a number of Alex’s construction and labour hire companies.

It is understood that is how Alex and Sultani met.

On Christmas Eve 2010, it was Sultani who lodged the form with ASIC to notify the corporate regulator that the liquidation of one of Alex’s companies was underway.

Sultani also threatened to kill one of the liquidators working on the Alex matter.