Former Comanchero bikie boss Jay Malkoun’s looming gang war and dark past after car bombing in Athens
Former Victorian president of the Comancheros bikie gang, Jay Malkoun, is now embroiled in a factional fight with a former friend as he recovers from his Mercedes being blown up in Greece.
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Police looking for Jay Malkoun’s enemies will have to work their way through a long list.
The 56-year-old Lebanese Australian served 16 years in prison after being busted in the late 1980s for his role in a $5.5 million heroin trafficking operation.
A former Victorian president of the Comancheros bikie gang, Malkoun is now embroiled in a factional fight with another former president — and former friend — Mick Murray, with gang members aligned to either man going to war with each other in Australia.
Malkoun fled Australia in 2013, first to Thailand, then to Dubai, where he is suspected of cultivating Russian organised crime contacts.
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In Thailand he was questioned as a witness about the abduction of former NSW Hells Angels member and drug trafficker Wayne Rodney Schneider.
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Schneider was abducted in 2015 from a villa near the party town of Pattaya, and his body later found in a shallow grave.
Malkoun was questioned by police but not charged.
A former kickboxer, he honed his criminal skills early as part of a drug syndicate which also included his brother Elie Malkoun.
Elie served a 10-year jail term for the same heroin trafficking operation.
Another brother, Joseph, was sentenced to four years for heroin trafficking in 1990.
Over the years Jay Malkoun has been accused of involvement in everything from extortion to drug dealing and weapons smuggling.
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Elie, released from Victorian prison in 1998, was jailed in the United States in 2011 for handgun possession, after he was caught outside a gun show in Arizona illegally possessing three handguns.
In 2006, tennis star Kim Clijsters unwittingly invited Elie Malkoun and his family to sit in her coaching box at the Australian Open in Melbourne, after she saw him playing with his family and took a shine to his children. She knew nothing of his background.
Jay Malkoun declared only a small income to the Australian Tax Office during his time in Australia, but lived in a penthouse apartment in Docklands in Melbourne, which he put up for sale for almost $2 million when he left the country in 2013. He drove a Maserati.
He handed control of the Comancheros over to Murray, with who he used to be close, before the pair fell out last year.
A friend of colourful Melbourne identity Mick Gatto, Malkoun also had links to the Spearmint Rhino strip club in Melbourne.
An underworld figure once threatened him by placing a bullet on the bar at the Spearmint Rhino and telling a staff members to tell Malkoun it was for him.
Mick Murray was once Malkoun’s right-hand man in the Comancheros, and Malkoun handed control of the club to him when he moved overseas.
The pair have fallen out badly, and members of the club in Victoria are now choosing sides. News Corp Australia does not suggest Murray was involved in the attack on Malkoun.
Originally published as Former Comanchero bikie boss Jay Malkoun’s looming gang war and dark past after car bombing in Athens
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