Bikie boss Nick ‘The Knife’ Forbes ordered not to associate with 68 offenders
Gold Coast bikie Nick ‘The Knife’ Forbes’ is fighting to overturn a police ban that prevents him from associating with 68 alleged recognised offenders. SEE THE ROGUES GALLERY
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An angry Gold Coast bikie boss is demanding to know why Queensland police have banned him from associating with some of the state’s most hardened criminals and others, whose official mugshots have been revealed for the first time in a civil court claim.
Nick “The Knife” Forbes, who recently returned to power as national president of the Mongols bikie gang, was issued a seven-page official warning for consorting with 68 alleged recognised offenders on February 17, his lawyer states in court documents.
The notice contains mugshots of the menacing looking group that includes accused killers, and feared henchmen, and is a virtual who’s who of Queensland serious crims, bikies and others.
But Mr Forbes Snr, 52, a former hospital orderly from Runaway Bay, is on bail awaiting trial in the District Court for two counts of money laundering related to an alleged boiler room scam a decade ago.
He has taken Supreme Court legal action to challenge the Queensland Police officer, Detective Senior Constable Peter Wilmot, who slapped him with the notice.
The list of 68 names in the warning includes Toby Mitchell, the notorious bikie who was kicked out of the Mongols earlier this month for alleged disloyalty to the gang, and David Meatuai, 41, the sergeant at Arms of that chapter, who is one of those accused of the murder of bikie Shane Bowden.
It also includes convicted domestic violence killer Nelson Andre Patea, 38, and Tama Lewis, also known as Darren Watson, who is described in legal circles as the “charming psychopath”.
It also includes Brendan Berichon, 44, an accomplice of the Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott in 1997, and Kris Spizzirri, 39, from Maudsland in the Gold Coast hinterland, the playboy son of a notorious Queensland drug kingpin, and alleged Mongols bikie Harley Joe Barbaro, 29, a truck driver, from Bundall, whose grandad was executed outside his home in Brisbane’s south when he was a child and whose brother is murdered Sydney underworld boss Pasquale.
The list also includes Queen Street Mall gunman Lee Matthew Hillier jailed last year for stabbing an ex-soldier to death and Anthony Yoon Sun Soong who was jailed for 13 years in 2019 for attempted murder.
The notices are issued under laws which were meant to be the centrepiece of the Queensland Government’s Serious and Organised Crime legislation, which replaced the controversial VLAD laws, introduced by the former Newman government after the 2013 Broadbeach bikie brawl.
Queenslanders convicted of consorting with bikies in recent months have only faced fines.
Just last week West End butcher Amein Odeh was fined $1000 for consorting with a former Bandidos president and Sergeant-at-Arms, while in January Grigori Kossian was sentenced to a $500 good behaviour bond for consorting and breaching his bail, and no conviction was recorded.
Mehran Faraji, 36, a personal trainer and former financial advisor from Kangaroo Point was last year convicted of consorting and fined $1000, and former President of Bandidos Centro chapter George Bejat, was last year convicted of consorting and fined $1000.
Mr Forbes, who stands at 187cm tall, argues in his claim filed last month that the court should overturn the decision to warn him for consorting with the 68 men because it “materially impacts his ability to associate with people,” and is unfairly exposing him to the risk of police charging him with consorting.
He has asked the court to force the QPS to give him a statement of reasons.
In a letter contained in Mr Forbes’ claim, a senior legal officer from the QPS legal unit declined an initial request from Mr Forbes’ lawyer to explain the reason for the warning in March.
“The issuing of an official warning … is a decision relating to the administration of criminal justice,” the officer wrote.
“Accordingly, … it is not a decision for which reasons need to be given.”
Mr Forbes is the father of Haydn Forbes, who was alleged in separate proceedings to be vice president of the Mongols “West City” Chapter.
Haydn, 26, has been in prison on remand since July last year charged, along with nine others, with the shooting murder of notorious bikie, Shane Bowden, on October 12, 2020.
Most of Haydn’s co-accused in this murder are also in the warning notice issued to his father.
The Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang is made up of former Finks bikies who “patched over”.
It is understood that police give mugshots on consorting warning notices so that those who receive them cannot later claim ignorance of the identity of a criminal associate.
The office warning notice, filed in court states in capital letters: “You are officially warned that the stated person(s) is a recognised offender, and consorting with the stated person(s) on a further occasion may lead to the commission of the offence of habitually consorting”.
Mr Forbes has also asked the court in his application to force the QPS to reveal when each of the 68 alleged recognised offenders will cease to be a recognised offender, defined in consorting legislation to be a convicted criminal who was sentenced to a crime punishable by at least five years in prison, or someone convicted of certain crimes such as associating with a terrorist organisation, weapons offences, riot, habitual consorting or kidnapping.
Criminals are no longer recognised offenders five years after they were convicted in the state’s Magistrates Court, and a decade after their conviction in the Supreme or District Courts.
The case is due in court on May 6 for a directions hearing.
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