The scene was Fortitude Valley’s trendy Hellenika restaurant on the retro-styled palm-fringed pool deck of The Calile Hotel.
It may have been only a couple of months after he escaped with a suspended sentence for his Mr Mista explosion, but George Bejat is allergic to keeping a low profile.
This is a man, after all, who used to get about in a $165,000 bright yellow Lamborghini with number plates “SRB PWR”.
On this mild night last year, Bejat, Zivko Stojakovic and four other Comanchero, including Amein Odeh and Talakai, were rubbing shoulders with Brisbane’s rich and beautiful at the up-market Greek restaurant, which had become a regular haunt.
The only problem was the $100 Italian caviar and $210 grilled whole New Zealand turbot were not the only things on the menu.
Several unwelcome dinner guests were on their way, in the shape of specialist Maxima police officers who raided the uber cool restaurant and charged the six bikies at Hellenika with habitual consorting.
The raid was a declaration by detectives. A statement. These gangsters might consider themselves untouchables, but police would fight a war of attrition to stop them. One fine dining restaurant at a time if necessary.
Before officers unceremoniously marched the six out of Hellenika they patted them down and found cocaine in the pocket of Odeh, who owns West End butcher shop Amin’s Butcher and Grill.
So too Stojakovic, who had 1.64g of cocaine in the front right pocket of his pants.
Straight-faced, he cheekily told them was just salt.
The joke was on him. In August he got six months’ jail, wholly suspended, for drug possession.
It wasn’t just cocaine that Stojakovic was into.
When Maxima police raided his parents’ Zeljko and Brigita’s modest yellow-brick 1970s unit in Coorparoo on a different occasion, he was busted with 17 tablets of the steroid Oxymetholone, commonly misused by bodybuilders to bulk up.
He also had a glass vial of the steroid Deca-Durabolin solution in his room, and a 200ml glass vial of the steroid Nandrolone Decanoate solution, as well as 24 tablets of the steroid Metandienone.
He was also convicted of possession of eight tablets of Anastrozole, an oestrogen blocker commonly used to treat breast cancer – a drug that is also misused by bodybuilders in conjunction with steroids and testosterone to achieve unnatural results.
Officers also found the erection drug Sidenafil but this charge was later dropped.
There is no suggestion that either Zeljko or Brigita engaged in any wrongdoing.
LUXURY HANGOUTS
After the Hellenika six were booted out of The Calile, they had to find new hangouts.
And they weren’t about to settle for any dives.
In October last year Bejat was captured by police on CCTV at the ritzy Palazzo Versace Hotel with Stojakovic when he was checking into the hotel with Samra and leaving the next day in a black Mercedes Benz.
And in April, May and June this year police saw various members of the group at fashionable new hangouts Bisou Bisou, a French brasserie that serves cocktails on the ground floor of Brisbane’s newly-opened five star Hotel X in Fortitude Valley and its sister venue, rooftop bar Iris, as well as at the Julius Pizzeria in South Brisbane and the Belvedere Bar ‘n Grill in Hamilton.
Bisou Bisou, which is owned by the Ghanem Group, sells $130 steaks, charges $220 for 25g of caviar and has an 11-page drinks menu.
Stojakovic is alleged to have met with Bejat, Samra, Russian-Born Grigori “Greg” Kossian, Cvetkovic and financial advisor-turned-personal trainer Mehran Faraji at this Brunswick St hangout on May 22 this year.
Faraji is another man with violent baggage.
In 2010 the Iranian-born Muay Thai kickboxer enthusiast from Kangaroo Point pleaded guilty to attacking nightclub reveller Daniel Williams, knocking him out cold with a single punch to his forehead in an unprovoked attack in The Met nightclub in the Valley.
Williams’ skull was fractured, and a drunk Faraji had to be pulled off his victims as he lay unconscious.
The assault in the nightclub’s “Red Room” was triggered when Faraji told Williams’ girlfriend to “shut up you slut” after she told him “Hey mister, shoosh” when he was cheering-on two men who were fighting in the nightclub.
Faraji, who wore $990 Gucci sneakers to court this month, was sentenced to one year in prison wholly suspended. He also has a previous conviction for hitting a 16-year-old boy on the back of the head and robbing him of his mobile phone at a bus stop.
After the May meeting Stojakovic allegedly turned at Bisou Bisou a week later with Bejat and Samra – a hulk of man with a non-too-subtle 1% tattoo on the front of his right leg.
Stojakvic was back in June with a group including Bejat, Samra, Cvetkovic and Kossian.
The Ghanem Group also owns the renowned Blackbird Bar and Restaurant on Eagle St and Byblos Bar in Hamilton’s Portside, which have featured in photos of Stojakovic that have been posted on Facebook.
Conveniently Bejat lives just steps away from Byblos in the Pinnacle building at the wharf.
There is no connection suggested between Ghanem Group and the men other than a mutual appreciation for fine dining.
By July, Bejat and Stojakovic were also banned from getting in touch with each other as part of bail conditions, but police allege Bejat had contact with Stojakovic on July 7 when he was at the Soul Building on The Esplanade at Surfers Paradise.
It is not known whether Bejat was sipping on cocktails that day, but The Soul is coincidentally home to a Peppers hotel which boasts a glam new restaurant Hyde Paradiso.
Police may have been fighting their war of attrition but these bikies were proving hard to hunt from their haunts.
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