Pascoe Vale candidate Oscar Yildiz posed for happy snap with Mick Gatto
An independent candidate who is making a serious tilt at a safe Labor seat posed for happy snaps with Mick Gatto, while it can be revealed he cast a deciding vote to help get a campaign sponsor’s development through Moreland Council.
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An independent candidate who is making a serious tilt at a safe Labor seat posed for happy snaps with an underworld figure.
And it can be revealed, while a councillor, he cast a deciding vote to help get a campaign sponsor’s development through Moreland Council.
Pascoe Vale independent candidate Oscar Yildiz said he regrets posting a snap with underworld figure Mick Gatto, taken at a friend’s wedding. But denied he knew Mr Gatto.
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“He sort of asked to get a photo with me. I don’t know him and he hasn’t helped with my campaign,” Mr Yildiz said.
“I posted it on social media and then took it down. It was a bit silly on my part.”
Mr Yildiz, who has spent more than $140,000 on his campaign to unseat Labor’s Lizzie Blandthorn, was the deciding vote that would have kept a Bambis Imports’ Brunswick development under three storeys.
Mr Yildiz, a Moreland councillor, had declared a conflict of interest due to his ‘business associations’ with Bambis Imports on two occasions, but did not excuse himself from the crucial June 2017 vote.
He told the Herald Sun on Tuesday he had never received any financial gain from Bambis Imports, despite saying the company had purchased a $1600 table at his state election campaign fundraiser this year.
He said he had known the company’s owners for more than 40 years but “he knew a lot of people in the area”.
When the application first went to council in December, 2015 Mr Yildiz said the applicants had supported the “charity he lead up’’ and was employed by.
He said he could not remember why he had not excused himself from voting on the Greens councillors’ amendment to keep the development to three storeys — the amendment was lost 5-6.
“I have been in hundreds of votes, I really can’t remember,” he said.
About six months after the application was approved Mr Yildiz took a job at a company headquartered at the property Bambis Imports owns.
Mr Yildiz’s face has been plastered on more than 140 signs in the Coburg and Pascoe Vale areas and on three large billboards.
He has been campaigning in the seat for three months, bombing Pascoe Vale residents with letter drops and social media advertising.
And he has plugged celebrity endorsements from celebrities — including performer Rhonda Burchmore and Carlton football legend Anthony Koutoufides — on his social media pages.
Mr Yildiz quit the Labor Party last year after he was not selected to run as its candidate in the nearby seat of Brunswick.
He said he decided to run in Pascoe Vale — which Labor holds on a 16.7 per cent margin — because he had grown up in the area and believed the party had neglected the safe seat.
Mr Yildiz is best known as the face behind charity Bully Zero — until he left the organisation last year.
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