How Bassam Hamzy pulled strings from inside Goulburn Supermax
He is a convicted murderer and gang boss. But Bassam Hamzy, one of the country’s most-notorious prisoners also fancied himself as a designer shoe importer - all allegedly from inside Australia’s most secure jail. INTERACTIVE: MAKINGS OF A CRIMINAL
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In a small cage inside Australia’s most secure jail, Bassam Hamzy allegedly manipulated the only way he had contact with the outside world to run his criminal enterprise and keep making money.
Hamzy, a murderer and gang boss, would be taken to the cage from his cell in Goulburn Supermax for phone calls, protected by legal privilege, with his lawyer Martin Churchill.
But, police allege, in those calls Hamzy could still wheel and deal by instructing Churchill to pass on instructions, messages and veiled threats.
In those calls Hamzy allegedly recruited members into his chaotic Brothers for Life gang chapter in the Illawarra, explored drug routes between NSW and Tasmania, helped a gangster on the run and used his family as debt-collecting pawns.
The 40-year-old even tried his hand at fashion by trying to import designer shoes from overseas to sell for an inflated price in Australia, a police statement of facts obtained by The Sunday Telegraph reveals.
“There is $80000 outstanding,” Churchill texted one drug supplier in October, 2017.
“Get the computer and the exhibits and the money. This is not something you should be mucking him around with. Do it now.”
Hamzy, Australia’s most supervised inmate, and Churchill were arrested this week.
Detectives laid drug supply and criminal group offences charges against the pair after intercepting Churchill’s phone while investigating the murder of 15-year-old Brayden Dillon in 2017.
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Brayden Dillon was allegedly killed in a revenge plot orchestrated by a Hamzy associate, Abdul Abu-Mahmoud, one of seven people charged over the murder.
The phone calls Hamzy made in Supermax were reminiscent of a multimillion-dollar drug syndicate Hamzy ran from Lithgow jail in 2008 using a smuggled mobile phone.
In the Supermax phone calls Churchill, a 62-year-old lawyer of 32 years, allegedly boasted of his connections to Hamzy, who was thrown behind bars for 21 years as an 18-year-old after shooting dead Kris Toumazis outside a nightclub on Oxford St in 1998 and shifted to Supermax because of his Lithgow jail drug syndicate.
“I am on very good terms with Australia’s most devious and vicious prisoners who put a hit on his own brother,” Churchill allegedly texted an associate in January last year.
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“He has managed massive drug deals and hits while in the highest security classification in Australia.
“I told the guy who committed fraud (on) me that he had made a lifetime enemy of Bassam Hamzy who will be thinking of ways to kill him or something worse.”
A large part of Hamzy’s operation was allegedly based on the supply of the drug ice throughout the Riverina and Illawarra regions between October 2017 and October 2018.
According to court documents Hamzy recruited one alleged supplier, Bronwyn “Bonnie” Brown, after he met her husband, Carl Edward Little in Supermax.
Little stomped a prison guard to death in Silverwater jail in 2007.
As well as allegedly dealing drugs on his behalf, Brown is claimed to have also moved thousands of dollars at Hamzy’s instruction, including to the partner of convicted murderer Konstantinos Georgiou.
Brown has been charged with drug supply and other offences.
In calls between Churchill and Hamzy tendered to court, in which other suppliers would sometimes sit quietly and listen in to on a three-way call, Hamzy rattled off the movement of thousands of dollars in cash, including through another lawyer and his father, Khaled Hamzy, police claim.
They allegedly used code words “barrister or lawyer” to refer to suppliers.
During one phone call with Churchill, which has been tendered to court, Hamzy was enraged that he has been short changed.
“This is now turning into something which I am very, very angry about Martin,” Hamzy said.
“How can there only be one and a half for me because it is nowhere near what I, what the boys have raised for me …. for my appeal OK.”
At one point, 49-year-old Brown, who was arrested in Wagga Wagga on Wednesday, was asked to pay thousands, using Hamzy’s name as a reference, into the trust account of a separate well-known Sydney solicitor.
That solicitor, who can’t be identified, has been charged with accessory after the fact to Brayden’s murder, with police alleging he facilitated the falsifying of affidavits in the case.
Resurrecting the Brothers for Life gang he inspired from Supermax in the mid-2000s, Hamzy recruited members to the Illawarra chapter.
It was run by Hamzy’s “lieutenant” Damien Featherstone, an allegedly violent criminal from Wollongong’s suburbs.
According to the police facts sheet tendered to the court, Featherstone met with Churchill in October 2018 because he was annoyed Hamzy had not sent anyone to help him in a battle against the Finks bikie gang.
In a three way conference call between Featherstone, Churchill and Hamzy a few days later, Hamzy allegedly said: “tell (Featherstone) to keep calm about the Finks, I will handle it”.
Months later when Featherstone was on the run from police, Hamzy allegedly organised $4000 to help him survive as a fugitive.
Hamzy’s business interests also extended beyond NSW.
According to court documents, he organised $13,000 to be paid to Adnan Cheikho, a shipping company director, who was planning to import designer brand shoes into Australia for sale.
Cheikho is the brother of disgraced former police officer, Kahled Cheikho, who is in Supermax with Hamzy.
At one point, during a phone call in February 2018, Hamzy discusses the sale of $9000 worth of kitchen and bathroom products he had somehow ended up with.
There is also mention of settling payment with a contact in Peru.
Hamzy and Churchill, who were arrested by the homicide detectives investigating Brayden Dillon’s death, have been charged with drug supply and criminal group offences. They are refused bail and due to appear in court in September and August respectively.
Originally published as How Bassam Hamzy pulled strings from inside Goulburn Supermax
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