By Sherryn Groch, Amilia Rosa and Sally Rawsthorne
When Melbourne’s gangland wars reached the usually quiet streets of Bali last month, even crime figures back home were surprised.
Zivan “Stipe” Radmanovic, 32, had been on the holiday island just two days when he was shot dead by helmeted intruders in the middle of the night, as his terrified wife, Jazmyn Gourdeas, hid under the covers in their luxury villa.
Sanar Ghanim, who was once in a relationship with the stepdaughter of dead underworld figure Carl Williams, after being shot in Bali. He survived his wounds.Credit: Instagram
Another Melbourne man, 34-year-old Sanar Ghanim, was shot in the leg and beaten during the targeted attack – but survived. Ghanim is the former partner of Danielle Stephens, who is the stepdaughter of slain underworld boss Carl Williams.
After a manhunt for the shooters unfolded across the island, three Australians were nabbed by border officials and charged with Radmanovic’s murder.
Ever since, Bali investigators – and diplomats from Australia – have been scrambling to piece together how a clutch of Australians far from home came to be at the centre of one of the most violent gangland shootings in Bali’s history.
Then on Thursday night in Melbourne, after Ghanim made a covert return home from Bali, his partner’s South Yarra cosmetic business was firebombed. No one was inside at the time of the suspicious blaze, but the building was completely gutted. Victoria Police say they believe the attack “was targeted and will investigate any potential links to any other incidents”.
Sources close to both the investigation in Bali and gangland figures in Australia say the warning to Ghanim is now clear.
The beauty shop of Sanar Ghanim’s partner, Daniella Gourdeas, was destroyed in a suspicious firebombing on Thursday night.Credit: Nine
None of the Australians caught up in the Bali shooting appear to be major players in the underworld back home, though multiple sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely, say an unpaid gangland debt running into the millions of dollars was involved.
The brazenness of the attack, in a country known for the death penalty, has some worried that violence is escalating as syndicates increasingly “outsource” jobs to inexperienced guns for hire.
Bali police have said the attack was targeted and planned, with others “likely” involved in Australia, but they have yet to determine if Radmanovic was the intended target or the victim of a botched hit.
The Australians charged, whose arrests and identities were first revealed by this masthead, are believed to be a crew of small-time crooks hired for the alleged murder. They now face the death penalty.
Radmanovic, who has been remembered as a devoted father of six, was a relatively unknown figure in the underworld, according to sources close to him and the investigation. He knew Ghanim through their partners, who are sisters.
“Now they’ll chase you to the ends of the Earth,” said one source. “But even then, they might shoot the wrong guy.”
Others believe that both the hit and the firebombing appear to have been a warning for Ghanim, who shares a child with the stepdaughter of the late crime boss, Carl Williams.
Speaking to Bali police in recent weeks from a secure location, Ghanim had told investigators he couldn’t identify his attackers and he was planning a covert return to Melbourne, according to a source close to the investigation. His partner, Daniella Gourdeas, who also witnessed the shooting and owned the beauty shop torched in South Yarra, had already returned to Melbourne, as had her sister with Radmanovic’s body.
Ghanim is a former kickboxer with underworld associates who had been living in Bali since at least last year as he set up the villa complex where the group were ambushed in June. The roads out there are still dirt, and the other completed villas were reportedly empty when the shooting took place.
More than a decade ago in Melbourne, Ghanim served jail time for his involvement in two non-fatal shootings, as well as drug offences.
Sanar Ghanim (inset) was wounded in a shooting at a Bali villa in the early hours.Credit: AAP
Radmanovic and his wife, Jazmyn Gourdeas, had arrived in Bali on June 12 and planned to stay just five days with her sister and Ghanim to celebrate Jazmyn’s 30th birthday.
“I don’t know who [would want my husband dead],” she told Bali police, according to her lawyers. “I also want closure – I want to know.”
His accused killers had been in Bali well before he arrived, Bali police say, planning the attack.
They allege one of the accused – 27-year-old Sydney plumber Darcy Jenson – set up the hit, having been in Bali since April and, as this masthead revealed, appearing to stake out the area near the crime scene almost two weeks before the attack.
Police retracing the steps of the accused trio allege that Jenson rented the cars and bikes used in the attack and waited outside as 23-year-old convicted drug dealer Mevlut Coskun and Paea I Middlemore Tupou, 26, shot Radmanovic and Ghanim.
Bali police inspect the crime scene of the fatal villa shooting in Badung.Credit: Amilia Rosa
Sydneysiders from birth, neither Jenson nor Coskun were well-known in the Harbour City’s underworld. Both had criminal convictions – Jenson for some minor traffic offending and Coskun for drug supply and dealing with the proceeds of crime, although this was sufficiently small-time to stay in the local courts and result in a noncustodial sentence.
A source close to the Bali case said Ghanim and the Gourdeas sisters told detectives they never saw their attackers’ faces.
The men came in the middle of the night, and Ghanim said he had protected himself by tucking his head down into a kickboxing stance. As Ghanim called for help with a gunshot wound in the leg and the attackers fled, Jazmyn crept out of bed to check her husband’s pulse.
“I visited the crime scene a few days after to collect personal belongings for Jazmyn, and the villa was intact, it wasn’t ransacked,” the source said. There were no signs of a robbery, but “blood was everywhere”. “On the floor, in the bathroom, the mirror glass was broken from the bullets.”
The aftermath of the firebombing Daniella Gourdeas’ cosmetic shop.Credit: Nine
The attack in Indonesia has not only shaken the surviving Australians but sent ripples through the underworld back home.
Most Australian crime bosses now call the shots from apparent safety overseas. Popular destinations for gangsters in exile include Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Thailand. But for some, the shooting in Bali, carried out in a country with the death penalty, means an alarming escalation.
“It’s just the start. Now you can have someone killed overseas, even there,” said one gangland source.
“Countries like Indonesia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates will see heaps of this. Soon they won’t use Aussies for the jobs, they’ll use cheap local alternatives.”
The Australian Federal Police did not answer questions on whether Indonesia had now requested its co-operation in the case or their own investigations onshore, but has previously said no one had been arrested in Australia over the Bali ambush.
A request for co-operation by Indonesia triggers a tightly controlled process in Australia, governed by long-standing federal police guidelines on crimes that carry the death penalty.
Victoria Police did not say whether they were investigating local connections or any fallout related to the Bali shooting, and referred questions to the AFP.
The Australian government has been providing consular assistance to the Australian men since their arrest and seeking briefings from Indonesian counterparts, as Foreign Minister Penny Wong reiterates Australia’s opposition to the death penalty.
With Cameron Houston
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