Australia’s biggest underworld figures revealed
Senior Mafia figures and outlaw bikies are among some of the hard men calling the shots in Australia’s underworld.
National
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Australia’s underworld is being controlled at unprecedented levels from overseas.
The nation’s dominant gangland forces are increasingly directing high-level criminal activity from offshore, some of them fugitives and others who have been able to flourish after deportation.
The influence of foreign-based criminals in New South Wales has been strong for about a decade, though authorities here have set their sights on them with some significant results.
In the past two years, Victoria’s outlaw landscape has been blown up by Kazem Hamad and Ahmed Al Hamza, operating from Iraq and Kuwait respectively.
Of course, there remains a core of underworld and organised crime figures who retain enormous control from a domestic base, among them senior Mafia men and outlaw motorcycle gang identities.
These are some of them.
KAZEM HAMAD
Kaz Hamad has up-ended Melbourne’s underworld establishment like few before him.
The feared Middle-eastern organised crime figure was already a formidable player before his release from prison for heroin trafficking in mid-2023.
After his immediate deportation, the 40-year-old began to wage war on the existing major players in the black market tobacco sector.
Hamad’s disruption of what was previously a stable and lucrative earn for a handful of figures, including Fadi Haddara, resulted in more than 100 arsons in a fiery tit-for-tat battle for industry control.
It cannot be accurately stated how much money Iraqi-born Hamad has made from some new-generation extortion activity in which victims are ordered to take an encrypted app phone call from the other side of the world in which he demands cash he paid of their shop will burn.
Hamad has made a foray into South Australian and West Australian illicit tobacco markets and is believed to be eyeing expansion into organised crime in other states.
Former Melbourne gangland figure Ahmed Al Hamza, who is now also based in the Middle-east, is a close ally of Hamad.
His range of enemies over many years has included Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim, George Marrogi and Nabil Maghnie.
Abdulrahim was murdered in a shooting ambush at Preston in February this year.
RAFAT ALAMEDDINE
Rafat Alameddine might have been offshore for two years but he is suspected of remaining in control of Australia’s most powerful crime family.
Authorities believe he continues to control the Alameddine empire, which has operated out of Sydney’s western suburbs with increasing influence for over a decade.
They are heavily linked with the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang and suspected of being a major force in Harbour City cocaine trafficking.
Rafat helmed the clan as it saw off the rival Hamze family in years of bloody conflict.
Now believed to be living in opulence in Lebanon as a dual-citizen, he has not been forgotten and is the target of high-level arrest warrants over his alleged activities back here.
One of them was issued against Rafat and associate John Ray Bayssari over allegations they plotted to kill rival Ibrahem Hamzy.
The pair is also wanted over their alleged role in orchestrating the murders of teen crime figure Salim Hamze and his cleanskin father Toufik at Guildford in October, 2020.
Though police at state and federal level have struck some significant blows against the family over the years, it retains broad and important affiliations with other crime families and syndicates in New South Wales.
The Alameddines have been linked to Kazem Hamad, the exiled gangland figure and tobacco wars protagonist who has wrought havoc in Melbourne since being deported to Iraq in 2023.
FADI HADDARA
Fadi Haddara was fearsome fighter and a man of many wives.
This man and his family have also made a fortune from Victoria’s illicit tobacco trade.
But some of his dominance has gone up in smoke as a new player entered Victoria’s tobacco scene and turned it into a fiery war.
The clan is long believed to have dominated the state’s black market smoke trade and had substantial interests interstate.
Its main man – former kickboxing champion turned western suburbs crime boss Fadi Haddara – is suspected of being the head of the multimillion-dollar syndicate that has more recently hit headwinds in the form of exiled crime kingpin Kazem Hamad.
In the past two years, Victorian restaurants and tobacconists linked to the Haddaras have been targeted by brazen arsonists believed to have been recruited by Hamad to send a message to his enemies.
Fadi’s Docklands restaurant Karizma was one of his more notable businesses that have been firebombed in the conflict.
That venue was torched twice in three days in late 2023, with those responsible caught on CCTV carrying jerry cans of fuel moments before setting the restaurant alight.
In March, Fadi had a string of gun-related charges laid against him dropped, including possession, handling stolen goods and possessing a firearm as a prohibited person.
High-profile lawyer-of-choice among Melbourne’s key gangland figures, Zarah Garde-Wilson, secured the court win for Haddara, who had also been linked to a stolen Glock handgun.
Fadi was making headlines well before the tobacco wars took hold.
In 2015, he was jailed for selling ice to an undercover police officer while running a drug and firearms racket from a factory in the western suburbs.
His family was for some years involved in conflict with the rival Chaouk family after the 2009 shooting murder of Fadi’s brother Mohammed at Altona North.
Before that, those with a keen eye for kickboxing would have seen Fadi fighting bouts on Fox Sports.
JAY MALKOUN
The smoothest criminal on this list, Jay Malkoun is as at home in high-society as he is in a bikie clubhouse.
A close friend of Gregory David Roberts, the con who escaped Pentridge Prison and authored international best-seller Shantaram, Malkoun has lived “the life”.
But make no mistake, this underworld veteran can be menacing.
In fact, he has issued threats to two of the three reporters who compiled this list.
To dot-point Malkoun’s life does him a disservice though.
The broad brushstrokes are he spent 10-years in a Perth prison after being convicted in1989 for heroin trafficking, emerged from prison and got busy making money and by 2009 was president of the Victorian Comanchero.
Malkoun kept on the move, shifting to Dubai in 2013.
The former “nightclub enforcer” left behind a strip club, Spearmint Rhino, and gang life with the Comanchero.
His stint overseas took him to ritzy Glyfada, Greece, where he survived a plot to kill him.
A bomb affixed to a Mercedes was detonated with Malkoun inside, almost blowing him into the afterlife in 2019.
Malkoun was injured but lived. Roberts was one of the many who visited him.
The champion kickboxer is a rarity having rubbed shoulders with royalty, movie stars, gangsters and tycoons.
ALLAN MEEHAN
Heavy weighs the crown.
And no crown, or badge, comes heavier than being the national Comanchero president.
The international ANOM law enforcement swoop of 2021 has caused havoc among the bikie gang’s leadership and some key members, particularly in Victoria, have been put out of action by police.
It caused an unforeseen leadership vacuum and the OMCG turned to Allan Meehan, known as the Little General.
No one saw Meehan coming.
The Catholic schoolboy learned the rules of gang life on the streets of Sydney as he grew up in one of the Emerald City’s rougher suburbs, Miller.
By the time he was in his mid-teens he had left school and was impressing the likes of Mark Buddle, a larger than life character who would leave his imprint on him.
Meehan’s bikie life began in Australia’s biggest outlaw gang, the Rebels.
Meehan learned fast and was on good terms with Rebels royalty, the Vella family.
But the Rebels couldn’t hold him.
Meehan’s rising status and connections, particularly with the powerful Buddle, led him to moving to the Comanchero after serving a prison stint from 2014 to 2016 for possessing a pistol.
After his release his unpredicted but rapid rise to Comanchero national president began.
The flashy Meehan, who likes showing off his wealth on Instagram, even got a new nickname care of a Versace dressing gown he posted of himself wearing, the Bath Robe bikie.
It can be tough at the top though.
In 2023, Meehan was extradited from the Gold Coast to Sydney after he was charged with breaching a serious crime prevention order, a tactic used by police to restrict the movements of their targets.
Meehan avoided jail in a court appearance where he arrived dripping in designer gear.
Like his predecessors, he is enjoying his time at the top while he can.
ABUZAR SULTANI
A judge described Abuzar Sultani in two words – cold-blooded.
The Rebel bikie and contract killer has been convicted of five murders in the lead up to his arrest in 2016, making him one of Australia’s deadliest men.
And police believe he has killed more.
The unassuming looking Sultani began killing in 2013, when he organised the fatal bashing of 18-year-old Nikola Srbin in the inner-south Sydney suburb of Redfern.
This murder was likely Sultani’s first, but it would not be his last as he graduated from shy university kid to notorious gangster – juggling both at the same time.
In 2015, he killed again, this time fellow Rebels bikie Mark Easter whose dumped body, found in Sydney’s north, had four bullets wounds in the back of his head.
It didn’t interrupt his studies at Macquarie University.
The following year, Sultani, known as “Abs”, was receiving distinctions while taking lives.
Still aged in his 20s, Sultani abstained from smoking, drinking or taking drugs and supported charities in his parents’ homeland, Afghanistan.
But he was also a ”meticulous” and merciless killer.
Within nine months of 2016, Sultani murdered three of his gangland contemporaries – Rebels figure Michael Davey, drug dealer Mehmet Yilmaz and personal enemy and so-called “Mafioso”, Pasquale Barbaro.
It was after the Barbaro murder police swooped.
Sultani would begin confessing to them his crimes and it moved NSW Justice Peter Hamill to decry Sultani’s life as a “waste” given his intelligence and abilities.
“A lot could be said about this young man and his transmogrification from a shy, quiet, intelligent middle child of conservative, hardworking family to a notorious killer and gangster,” Justice Hamill said.
“It is a sad waste of life.”
Another, Justice Desmond Fagan, was more pointed.
He simply described Sultani as “cold-blooded” and “meticulous”.
Sultani is serving multiple life sentences.
ALI ELMOUBAYED
While Rafat Alameddine is away, police allege Ali Elmoubayed is holding the family’s crime fort.
That would make him a man with great sway, but it may also come with the drawback of becoming an even bigger target.
Elmoubayed’s Merrylands home was recently peppered with bullets in a daylight drive-by attack.
That happened just days after a car at the property was torched.
The incidents are being investigated by Taskforce Falcon, a new team set up to examine a surge in gang conflict in the Sydney metro area.
A Parramatta Local Court hearing on the same day as the drive-by heard that Elmoubayed wanted his bail conditions altered so he could move into a more secure, high-rise apartment complex for the safety of his family.
Police opposed the application on the basis that significant crime figures already lived in the complex.
Bail conditions were ultimately altered.
Elmoubayed is facing more than 40 charges.
They include supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, dealing with the proceeds of crime, kidnapping and knowingly directing the activities of a criminal group.
MICK GATTO
If you have a problem, call Mick.
In the construction industry it’s worked this way for years.
When Gatto speaks, people listen.
His contact list is full of influential people, including captains of industry, journalists and a number of those on this list.
Gatto, however, has bristled more and more at the media’s portrayal of him.
Revelations of the extent of the CFMEU’s infiltration by gangland figures and outlaw bikies, including him, got under his skin.
It has put at risk Gatto’s influence in an industry where big builders pay to solve problems.
Gatto’s reach is nationwide and he is known for his negotiation prowess.
But the imposing ex-heavyweight and gangland war survivor has mellowed.
Gatto lives on the Mornington Peninsula and spends less time in Carlton’s Lygon Street.
Still, there’s a few journalists he wouldn’t mind knocking out.
The gangland survivor remains a key supporter to those who have been loyal to him.
Tattooed to Gatto’s chest is the name Faruk Orman, who was wrongly convicted of an underworld murder.
It resides near another name inked to his chest, Robert Richter.
As we know, Gatto was acquitted of the murder of Andrew “Benji” Veniamin and he has never looked back.
Richter, his barrister, made that possible.
These days Gatto would rather these matters be resigned to history.
When the ABC highlighted some police intelligence holdings about him, he sued.
Unfortunately for Gatto, it was a court fight where he came off second best.
TAREK ZAHED
Former Comanchero sergeant at arms Tarek Zahed will have been working to re-establish himself in the free world after his early prison release in late 2024.
The crime figure, dubbed the “Balenciaga Bikie” and “Gucci Gangster” over his love for designer goods, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars for hindering a homicide investigation.
The 45-year-old had previously pleaded guilty to the murder of 24-year-old Sydney man Youssef Assoum in Bankston in 2014, but that charge was later dropped.
Zahed himself survived an attempt on his life in 2022 when he was shot 10 times while leaving the Body Fit gym in Auburn.
His younger brother Omar died in the gunfire.
Zahed was left fighting for life and underwent emergency surgery, with some of the bullets striking his head.
Now a free man, Zahed’s connections to those with links to the underworld have re-emerged.
The Herald Sun last year revealed that Zahed had close ties with jetsetting boxing trainer Salim Aschna, who worked at the Fighters X-Press gym in Dandenong before it went up in flames in 2023.
Aschna’s growing business ventures in the Middle East have expanded Zahed’s connections to money meccas such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where Aschna has been spotted in recent months celebrating the grand opening of his new restaurant, Huqqabaz.
Zahed’s criminal history dates back more than two decades, with one of his first convictions in 1995 for assault and resisting arrest.
In 2001, he unleashed his dog on a woman to maul her during a road rage incident.
In 2004, he stomped on a man’s head so hard during a botched drug deal that he fractured the victim’s skull.
AHMED AL HAMZA
At age 27, Ahmed Al Hamza is a good deal younger than the average organised crime kingpin.
The man with the $1.6 million Richard Mille watch on his wrist seems to have been a player for much longer than the nine years since, aged 18, he turned up on the TV news being loaded into an ambulance after being shot in the leg at Craigieburn, in Melbourne’s north.
Al Hamza is now one of the legion of Australian criminals based out of the Middle-east who have built staggering wealth and power while remaining deeply enmeshed in crime back here.
Earlier this year, he was pictured at Brave CF kickboxing event in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.
It was a rare glimpse of a man who guards his privacy, well aware there is nothing to be gained from having an active online presence.
Al Hamza, who underworld sources now does his travelling via private jet, left Australia in 2022 at around the time underworld figure Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim was shot at a funeral in Fawkner.
As a younger man, he was on good terms with the Marrogi crime family but that relationship deteriorated and Al Hamza went out on his own.
He would later be acquitted by a Supreme Court jury over the 2017 murder of young drug dealer Anwar Teriaki, who was ruthlessly shot dead after being cornered at a Roxburgh Park house.
Al Hamza was later busted at his city apartment holding weapons stolen in a frightening gun store armed robbery.
He had previously been of interest to police investigating the shooting of a man outside a futsal venue at Coolaroo.
THE WHISPERER
Some years ago, an employee in an Australian casino high-roller section got a close-up look at Mafia power.
Men were regularly approaching a heavy punter at one of the tables and kissing his hand in what looked like something out of a Godfather movie.
It was only later that the worker found out that the mystery man was Australia’s most powerful Italian organised crime figure, a man we’ll call The Whisperer.
The hand-kissing was a very public show of regard for a figure who, in his own circles, is both feared and respected.
There is conflicting information about whether he is still the Australian Mafia’s main man and the organisation doesn’t exactly send out press releases when it makes corporate structure changes.
But there is no question he retains a strong hand within the Honored Society and that he has accumulated colossal wealth over the decades.
It has not always been that way.
As a much younger man, police suspect, The Whisperer did a lot of heavy lifting for others, earning the trust and respect which can take a man a long way in that world.
That work had him identified as a suspect in at least two murders linked to friction within Mafia ranks.
ROCCO ARICO
Prison has been his home for much of the past quarter-century but no one is under any illusion that Rocco Arico’s influence has waned.
The wealthy Arico remains a major player in Victoria’s Italian organised crime sphere, despite the challenges presented by life inside.
In fact, the corrections system might be where this feared figure has done some of his best work.
When Arico went inside in 2000 over a road rage shooting, he was regarded as one of Carl Williams’ soldiers.
Ten years later he was a free man with an estimated wealth of $10 million, something he put down to hard work and luck on the punt.
Within the system where he has since returned for drug and extortion crimes, sources say that Arico’s word is law among fellow inmates.
He does not jack up staff, who note he is courteous and smart enough to avoid the kind of unnecessary trouble that can make life more difficult than it needs to be.
Concrete links have never been made between Arico and two significant criminal matters, but they have generated police and gangland curiosity in the past.
Toby Mitchell almost died in a shooting ambush at Brunswick in 2011, months after cheating Arico in a big cocaine deal.
The bikie used a bag of lad’s magazines, which was meant to contain $375,000 to pay for the powder.
The prison bashing death of drug boss Carl Williams in 2010 also brought whispers about Arico.
Williams, who had turned informer, had been intending to open up about the murder of standover man Richard Mladenich at a St Kilda hotel in May, 2000.
Arico is at risk of deportation at the end of his current term.
JOHN KIZON
Whether he likes it or not, John Kizon is viewed as the face of organised crime in West Australia and has been for decades.
Kizon is a tough hombre who has friends through the business and sporting spheres and whose influence stretches across the continent.
The former boxer was the last person on the phone to Alphonse Gangitano the night he was murdered at his Templestowe home in 1997.
He did prison time for heroin trafficking decades ago but has stayed out of major trouble with the law since then, though that does not mean he has not been an object of police curiosity.
In 1995, a witness in a trial was found dead from a drug overdose after police relocated him to Queensland.
Kizon and another man were later acquitted of cannabis conspiracy charges.
Among Kizon’s friends is former Perth strongman Amad “Jay” Malkoun, another former Melbourne boy and a significant figure in the world of organised crime.
Malkoun wrote in his book, The Consultant, of Kizon once hosting a meeting involving some of Australia’s toughest men to sort out some business issues.
“(He) knew everybody relevant in Australia, the go-to guy in Perth who could make most shit happen. Hated by the police, embraced by the media, John is a no-grey guy who’s played by the rules and stuck to his code of ethics,” Malkoun wrote.
TROY MERCANTI
Mercanti is one of the West Australian crime world’s biggest names, a man from a wealthy business family who preferred chaos.
Designer clothes-loving Mercanti has dished out horrific violence and been stabbed himself in a career which has involved stints with the Coffin Cheaters, Finks and, more recently, the Mongols bikie gangs.
The son of a shoe repair multi-millionaire was years ago banned from associating with 31 named individuals, the first such order in West Australia.
Former Perth gangland figure Jay Malkoun is a fan.
“Good bloke. Great sense of humour,” Malkoun wrote in his book The Consultant.
One person who might not agree with that character assessment is Tony Mokbel, once the biggest drug dealer in Victoria.
Mokbel was a powerful figure when Mercanti allegedly jumped him at a meeting of some top gangland players inside a Carlton restaurant in late 2002.
Another to suffer at the hands of Mercanti was his former partner Tammy Kingdom, who suffered years of domestic violence for which he was jailed in 2013.
Not that Mercanti’s displays of aggression are confined to the home front.
He was last year fined for punching a rival bikie in the head as horrified customers in a Perth fish and chip shop looked on.
In 2007, he attacked a man at the Geisha Bar in Northbridge and later copped a 28-month prison stretch for his trouble.
THE KNIFE
The man known as “The Knife” is a major player in Australia’s bikie scene and has made his mark in multiple jurisdictions over two decades.
Queensland-based man, who has the words “Terror Team” tattooed across his chest, is a formidable figure at the helm of the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang.
The degree of his influence was shown in 2021 when there was a major restructure of the gang’s powerful Victorian arm.
He decided change was required and it came at the expense of some of the biggest names in Melbourne’s underworld.
Key members Toby Mitchell, Mark Balsillie, Sam Abdulrahim and Jason Addison were among the Mongols who found themselves without a club in the purge.
‘The Knife’ was a key opponent of stringent anti-bikie laws brought in by the former LNP Queensland government of Campbell Newman.
In 2023, he had something of a win over authorities when charges over an assault in Darwin were dropped.
That matter related to an alleged 2014 attack on another one-percenter during a bikie brawl at the Top End city’s Discover nightclub.
Three years earlier, then as a Fink, he was involved in a vicious brawl at Adelaide’s City nightclub in which he swung punches and wielded a bar stool at a group of Hells Angels.
He was jailed over the infamous Gold Coast “Ballroom Blitz” confrontation of 2006 in which Finks and Hells Angels fought en masse at a fight night.
BILAL HAOUCHAR
The coming years will tell whether Haouchar can maintain the heavy influence he exerted over the Sydney underworld for years.
Because, if so, it will have to be from within the Lebanese prison system, where he was this month sentenced to spend the next eight years on drug supply and money-laundering offences.
New South Wales organised crime police were rightly chuffed when Haouchar was given the long stretch for crimes committed back here.
“You can run but you cannot hide, and that includes across international borders,” acting Assistant Commissioner Jason Weinstein said.
Haouchar was arrested with four associates in Beirut in 2023.
His detention was linked to raids in the Harbour City against a syndicate suspected of moving more than $1 billion through guns, drugs, tobacco and money-laundering.
Haouchar left Australia in 2018 as gangland police put the screws on him.
Investigators say he has been looked at over multiple underworld murders.
Mick Willing, the former head of the NSW homicide squad, told The Daily Telegraph last year that there was a period in late-2012 in which police believed he was involved in a succession of shootings in which five people died and two were seriously injured.
He said Haouchar was at the centre of a group of criminals which came under the scrutiny of Strike Force Earp.
“(He was) ruthless and the information we got from the streets … was depending on the circumstances, he wasn’t a person you crossed,” Mr Willing said.
HASAN TOPAL
Topal is a former model suspected of at least two murders, numerous non-fatal shootings and international drug smuggling.
The international fugitive was among major players allegedly involved in the ill-fated ANOM communications platform which was used by criminals to broker huge drug deals.
Supposedly surveillance-proof, it was actually a trojan horse for law enforcement which allowed police to watch messaging and left major organised crime figures exposed.
Topal was one of more than 30 people arrested in September, 2023, in Turkey as part of authorities’ on drug imports and organised crime hits.
It has emerged that Topal was giving orders to underworld foot soldiers via ANOM app.
A court last year heard evidence that he wanted to take over drug trafficking in Melbourne’s southeast from his European bolthole.
Topal, who was once on the books of the Chadwick Models agency, would later emerge as the boss of the Comanchero’ Victorian chapter.
While on home soil, Topal was thought to be one of the gunmen who shot Comanchero Robert Ale amid growing instability among the gang’s leadership.
Topal has also remained a suspect in two homicides in 2017 in which two innocent people were gunned down in cases of mistaken identity.
One victim, 22, was shot at Keysborough and Zabi Ezedyar, 26, was gunned down as he was greeted at the door of a Narre Warren property where a senior Mongol bikie lived.
He is also a person of interest to police investigating the shooting of three Bandidos outside the gang’s Brunswick clubhouse in 2017, before a second drive-by on the Bolte Bridge three months later.
Topal also became the intended target of a hit before leaving Australia, where it was believed powerful Middle Eastern organised crime figures wanted him murdered.
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