$5m bounty placed on life of powerful Melbourne organised crime figure

Melbourne syndicate bosses are offering multimillion-dollar contracts to eliminate their rivals amid a period of extreme instability in the Middle Eastern organised crime sphere.

Huge murder contracts of up to $5m are being offered amid high stakes conflict in Melbourne’s underworld.

Police and gangland sources say the unprecedented money is being put up by syndicate bosses to eliminate their rivals during a period of extreme instability in the Middle-eastern organised crime sphere.

The Herald Sun has been told the biggest lure is a $5m bounty placed on the life of a powerful organised crime player.

Another career criminal who has been a major combatant in one violent dispute is the subject of a $1.5m contract.

That man has over some years been implicated in fatal and non-fatal shootings.

Sources say figures of up to $1m are being bandied around for the killing of another MEOC figure.

“Dead man walking,” was how one underworld source described that man.

The Herald Sun revealed in September that gangland figures had placed a price of up to $1m on the head of career criminal Gavin “Capable” Preston.

That emerged after the ambush murder of Preston and the wounding of his mate AJ Maghnie at the Sweet Lulu cafe in Keilor.

Police belonging to the Victoria Police VIPER Taskforce at the site of the shooting death of Mohammed Keshtiar in South Yarra. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

A Sydney man has been charged with the murder of Preston and another New South Wales crime figure has been questioned in a maximum security jail in that state.

The fatal shooting of Mohammed Keshtiar at South Yarra in August had the hallmarks of a highly planned contract hit.

Keshtiar, known as “Afghan Ali”, was a well-connected and feared crime identity who knew he was a potential target and had shifted into an apartment complex off Chapel St partly because of its security.

Keshtiar was suspected of being involved in the illicit tobacco trade, a main ingredient contributing to the overheated MEOC environment in Melbourne.

There has been extreme friction over the smoke rackets amid the aggressive intervention of new players.

Gavin Preston was killed at Sweet Lulu cafe in Keilor.

Mohammad Akbar Keshtiar was killed near his home off Chapel St in South Yarra.

They are behind many of the dozens of tobacconist store fires which have resulted as rivals fight for massive profits.

Although the huge money at stake is a factor, one theory is that personal hatreds have played a role in the events of the past year.

Some of that rancour is believed to trace back a decade or more and relates to several violent crimes involving key players.

Some longstanding Melbourne underworld players are believed to have been exercising extreme caution in what are precarious times.

The Herald Sun has been told some have elected to stay away from home and avoid routine, something which can leave them vulnerable to danger.

Melbourne’s gangland war of the early 2000s was marked by big money offers to kill.

Those ran as high as the $300,000 dangled for the murder of kickboxer Michael Marshall, which was carried out at South Yarra in October, 2003.