Melbourne mobster’s right-hand man Jim Taousanis spills secrets
He was the right-hand of notorious criminal Lenny McPherson who ran mobs from Melbourne. Now ‘Commando’ Jim Taousanis reveals more about Australia’s worst criminal identities. WATCH THE VIDEO
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Organised crime enforcer, accused murderer and former Army Reserve commando intelligence officer Jim Taousanis can now add author to his list of infamous achievements, with a tell-all manuscript on Australia’s east coast criminal underbelly.
The one-time feared gangster and fight promoter will end his self-imposed life of anonymity after making headlines in the 1980s through to the early 2000s, with his proposed book that reads like a vivid Who’s Who of the nation’s criminals, dirty cops and colourful identities.
And many people, good, bad and definitely ugly, will not be happy.
The manuscript, obtained by News Corp Australia and titled You were meant to be killed at the Hilton, does not look to settle scores and is part redemption and discovery but will definitely open old wounds as it names who Taousanis speculates are behind dozens of unsolved crimes including murders, disappearances and execution plots, as well as colourful anecdotes about his former life.
Think hit TV series Underbelly but definitely ‘unplugged’ with lawyers yet to read the final script and no doubt likely to have issues with some of the once secret Underbelly claims formally only heard in secret in royal commissions and ICAC.
“It was an interesting time and back the reports went across the whole of Australia and overseas but it was sort of squashed because of the involvement of the National Crime Authority, Wood Royal Commission and Police Integrity Commission and so on but now here is the real story,” the 58-year-old personal trainer and martial arts instructor said yesterday from his fitness studio in Brisbane.
“No I’m not worried about my safety, I’m not concerned and I’ve taken certain precautions but I was shot back in 1999 and the threat is still quite real and the people involved in that are still currently very active and if anything they have got a little better and their methods more sophisticated but then so has technology.
“I think there was a necessity and I took the time to write this book over a couple of years to get important information out. If there is a risk, it’s worth the risk.”
Taousanis is the eldest son of Greek migrant parents who first set up in Bonegilla migrant camp in north east Victoria before settling in Sydney’s inner west and now Brisbane.
He said he had been free of crime for 28 years and took two years to write the manuscript to reflect on his life and he expected a hit man to come after him as “quite likely”.
All the big names have starring roles in the manuscript including mob boss Lenny McPherson who was the man who brought Taousanis into the criminal world as his enforcer and was described by authorities as the most notorious and powerful Australian career criminals of the late 20th century who ran mobs along the entire eastern seaboard from Melbourne to Brisbane.
There is also racing identity George Freeman, Billy and Louis Bayeh, murderer Neddy Smith, drugs boss Les Kalache, a convicted Yugoslav standover man, corrupt cop Roger Rogerson and former Kings Cross porn cinema owner Konstantinos Kontorinakis, known as “Salami Con”, who was jailed for up to 14 years in 2017 in the Northern Territory for a methamphetamine operation.
To a lesser degree well known colourful Kings Cross identities such as the Ibrahim brothers John and Sam get mentioned and the now dead thug Danny Karam.
Then there is a rolling list of police officers and prison guards Taousanis had run-ins with and former commandos who fought on both the criminal and police sides.
As per its title, it centres on the nationally infamous 1991 shootout at the Hilton hotel in Sydney’s CBD, including evidence of a set-up by police previously only heard in secret hearings at the 1997 Wood Royal Commission into police corruption on National Crime Authority recordings.
Taousanis, who would go to jail for several years for the shootout including wounding corrupt cop Craig ‘Snidley’ McDonald, said he did not have a death wish but thought now was as good a time as any to pull back the curtain on what and who was really behind criminality in Australia and plots, by police, the judiciary and also the Australian Army, to manipulate society outcomes.
Taousanis dropped out of public life in 2005 when he was a kickboxing promoter of a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competition at the Casino Hotel on the Gold Coast that ended up in a OMCG-related shooting incident by others that indirectly may have prevented an unrelated other assault plot.
“I had a lot of time to think, I enrolled to study when I was in Long Bay jail and there were philosophical thoughts, I studied eastern religions, all kind of things, and I look at why I am here, what’s going on and if I have an opportunity to help others then I will take it,” he said.
“My chapter on growing up in school that has a lot of lessons in there about growing up, the choices, the sliding door moments and once you go through one it is difficult to back up so you’ve got to live with the consequences here and there.
“The consequence of going to prison and getting involved in crime, name in the media, going through the courts. all kind of things, stirring up hornets nests can last for decades and it has for me, it has lasted for decades but the story continues.”
Taousanis also claims to have had a chip implanted in him as an experiment post his days as an intelligence officer in the Army commandos based in Sydney, saying all the major nations’ militaries were now clandestinely engaged and competing for Electro Magnetic Frequency mind altering applications.