Jailed crime boss Rocco Arico’s wife pleads with tax office to access multi-million-dollar fortune
THE fall of jailed crime boss Rocco Arico is on show in the Supreme Court, where his family is locked in a multi-million-dollar battle with the tax office.
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THE fall of jailed crime boss Rocco Arico is on show in the Supreme Court, where his sick wife is pleading on behalf of his parents in a multi-million-dollar battle with the tax office.
Franki Arico is challenging confiscation and freeze orders slapped on the couple’s assets and bank accounts, telling a judge the orders had left them struggling to survive.
A writ issued by the Australian Taxation Office claims Antonio and Antonia Arico have failed to pay more than $2 million in income tax. He is said to owe just over $1.03 million and she just over $1.045 million.
Franki Arico, who is battling lupus, said they did not believe they owed this, and were unemployed and could not afford a barrister.
“They’ll fight for what they believe. They feel like they’re being a little bit bullied by the ATO.”
But a lawyer for the ATO said the evidence supporting its claim was “conclusive”, and the couple’s attribution of large sums to gambling wins was “just too good to be true”.
Earlier this year Rocco Arico was jailed for 14 years for drug trafficking, extortion, and weapons offences. He was then considered one of Australia’s most powerful crime figures, with a property portfolio estimated to be worth about $10 million.
Justice Maree Kennedy heard that Arico’s parents were desperate to access more than the $500 a week each was permitted to take from their bank accounts.
They are also asking that their family home in Brunswick be excluded from the asset freeze.
Franki Arico said: “We would like the property not to be frozen and the accounts. We would like to not have a restriction on the amounts … if they need to pay bills it makes it a bit more difficult. They’re both unemployed.
“We feel that my in-laws have been put in the corner.
“This tax matter has put so much pressure, and it’s very difficult being unrepresented in the Supreme Court.
“As you can appreciate it’s difficult for me. I’m not a lawyer. I’m just an ordinary person.”
But Ian Martindale, QC, for the ATO, told the court the couple had failed to produce any material to back up their request for variations to freeze orders.
Mr Martindale said evidence supporting the ATO claim was “conclusive”.
And he claimed Rocco Arico had already disposed of a variety of assets, including his Lygon St cafe, and had transferred money overseas.
The court heard that while the Aricos would be permitted to use equity in the Brunswick property to pay “reasonable” legal expenses, they could not get access to funds associated with any properties affected by confiscation orders by the Office of Public Prosecutions.
They can apply to the ATO to pay larger bills, such as council rates.
The couple has until August 16 to outline all their assets to the court.
Should they continue to challenge the ATO, the matter will return to court in October.
JAIL FEUD OVER DEBT
MAFIA kingpin Rocco Arico has become embroiled in a conflict with one-time friend and key criminal associate “Little’’ Tommy Ivanovic over money, it has been claimed.
It is speculated that the feud is over an outstanding debt relating to the April 2010 murder of gangland boss Carl Williams by Matthew Johnson. Johnson, Ivanovic and Williams shared the same jail unit.
Arico had been a suspect; he had reason to want Williams dead after leaks that Williams was about to inform on him over a historical murder.
The Calabrian mobster was the first person to be called from the unit, by Ivanovic, following the murder.
Separate sources have raised the issue of an outstanding debt. It can also be revealed that police reinvestigated a middleman over a transfer of money relating to the hit, but nothing came of the probe.
Investigators had been planning to take a statement from Williams over the shooting murder of Richard Mladenich at the Esquire Hotel in St Kilda on May 16, 2000.
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It is speculated that Arico, a Williams associate, was ordered to perform the hit over a drug debt owed to Williams.
Arico was also the first person on the scene when Ivanovic killed Ivan Conabere in Brunswick in 2002.
Police believe Arico formed a relationship with a suspected corrupt police officer who is suspected of having made millions of dollars from their illicit enterprise.
Earlier this year Ivanovic was stabbed in Barwon Prison, in what is thought to have been a payback attack over another prison fallout.
Ivanovic’s intimate knowledge of underworld killings, particularly that of Williams, has made him a focus of investigators.
Those with whom Ivanovic has had associations include Mick Gatto and former police officer Paul Dale, who were both investigated by the taskforce which probed Williams’s jailhouse murder.
Arico is appealing against his sentence over drug trafficking and extortion.