CFMEU deals put union in bed with bikies and the underworld

Firms backed by a Sydney underworld-linked businessman involved in buying illegal guns and the former boss of Victoria’s Comanchero bikie gang have secured critical backing from the CFMEU, facilitating their access to major construction projects, including taxpayer-funded sites.

An investigation by this masthead, 60 Minutes and The Australian Financial Review has uncovered a series of fresh cases involving building industry firms with deep underworld links, including several which have secured crucial backing from the CFMEU.

The investigation, part of the ongoing Building Bad series, has also uncovered new links between bikies and the union, with CFMEU organisers instructing construction industry firms to employ senior bikies as delegates as recently as earlier this year.

Construction industry figure Daniel Salter.

The scale of the problem raises ongoing questions for state and federal policing agencies, who were attacked on Saturday by CFMEU administrator Mark Irving KC for failing to tackle the infiltration by organised crime.

Irving was appointed by the federal government in response to the revelations in the Building Bad series prompting protests in support of the CFMEU’s previous leadership and a split in the wider union movement.

Evidence suggests both the union and building companies have enabled the underworld takeover of pockets of Australia’s construction sector.

While the Victorian and NSW governments have proposed new laws aimed at cleaning up the industry in the wake of the Building Bad scandal, state and federal police have largely been silent on what they will do, if anything, to aid Irving’s aims to clean up the building industry as he reforms the CFMEU.

Three experienced Victoria Police organised crime detectives, speaking on the condition of anonymity, were scathing of the force’s “assessment” of individual criminal allegations released on Friday because it made no mention of organised crime and corruption.

“They’ve [the force] known about this problem for years but doing something would take actual resources and time, which are all going to the fires [tobacco shop arson attacks],” said one detective.

Victorian Police Minister Anthony Carbines said on Sunday that Irving had requested a meeting with Victoria Police and pointed to an existing organised crime taskforce.

“We actually have to follow the evidence. We actually have to understand, as I’m sure Mr Irving does, that if we work together and we bring the evidence together … that’s when governments, through agencies like Victoria Police, can assess that evidence, launch investigations and lay charges where it’s appropriate,” he said.

Irving has vowed to turn his investigative blowtorch onto both union officials and building company bosses who have facilitated corruption or underworld infiltration, but has also described the “massive” scale of this challenge— a concern separately highlighted by a series of fresh case studies uncovered by this masthead.

One of the underworld-linked firms to be given union backing is labour hire firm X-Forces Labour, which is controlled by Daniel Salter, a former New Zealand soldier turned NSW businessman.

CFMEU and building industry sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity fearing blowback, said Salter obtained a valuable and rare union labour hire agreement in Victoria in October 2023 after the involvement of another figure with alleged underworld ties, Billy Mitris.

Billy Mitris during his boxing career.

Mitris’ best friend and closest confidant is now-former CFMEU assistant secretary Elias Spernovasilis, the sources said. Spernovasilis was one of a dozen union bosses sacked late last month by Irving as part of a leadership clearout when he began his administration.

But prior to his removal, the CFMEU sources said Spernovasilis had directed his union to provide an EBA to two of Salter’s firms, including one registered in Mitris’ name and which purports to employ former Australian soldiers.

Former senior CFMEU official Elias Spernovasilis.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

The CFMEU backed Salter’s firms despite his alleged underworld links and the fact that one of his earlier labour hire firms in NSW had collapsed, with a liquidator’s report dated March 2022 claiming it owed almost $1 million to creditors, including nearly $60,000 in unpaid wages and superannuation.

Veteran CFMEU member and former shop steward Robbie Cecala, who broke ranks at the weekend to back Irving’s administration, has attacked the CFMEU’s support of the proliferation of suspect labour hire companies that offer union members only insecure work and have been prone to underworld infiltration.

Salter’s attempted rise in the labour hire industry and efforts to curry union favour in NSW, Victoria and Queensland provides a stark example of Cecala’s broader concerns.

CFMEU member Rob Cecala.Credit: Eddie Jim

In 2021, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal examined whether Salter should be permitted to hold a firearms licence after NSW Police claimed he was not a fit and proper person because of his alleged links to the underworld.

The tribunal heard evidence that Salter had been arrested by federal police in 2017 for sourcing automatic pistols on the blackmarket and ruled that even though Salter’s charges were withdrawn, the evidence showed him to be “involved in criminal conduct relating to illegal acquisition of firearms, which is seriously concerning”.

The tribunal also declared that the NSW and federal police had gathered sufficient evidence to support a finding that Salter “was associating and continued to associate with known criminals”, having initially stripped Salter of his gun licence in 2019 over his “convictions for the steroid and drug charges” and his association with “members of an outlaw motorcycle gang (OMCG), and the illegal supply of firearms”.

When interviewed, Salter claimed the tribunal ruling was unjust and denied any wrongdoing but could not explain why he had used Billy Mitris to source a union EBA in Victoria.

Pressed by this masthead on his relationship with Mitris, Salter hung up.

Mitris has no criminal convictions, but his ties to the underworld have also been aired in a 2015 case involving a convicted mafia drug trafficker who was living at Mitris’ city apartment. The trafficker claimed $20,000 in cash seized from him by police was a legitimate loan from Mitris.

X-Forces Labour has won work on Victorian government jobs, including its $26 billion North East Link project in the past few months.

Before hanging up, Salter said he had supplied very few workers to the North East Link project. Mitris hung up the phone when contacted and Spernovasilis could not be reached.

In his interview, union whistleblower Cecala also warned that some union bosses had been giving preferential treatment to their mates who ran certain building and labour hire firms.

CFMEU organisers and delegates feared challenging these firms because they could use their high-ranking union connections to quash dissent from ordinary members, he said.

Labour hire firm

Mitris, who for years has provided security services to nightclubs and the construction sector, is associated with at least two other labour hire or traffic management firms that have secured valuable union EBAs, with Fair Work Commission documents showing Mitris has signed off on multiple CFMEU agreements.

Other labour hire firms with links to alleged organised crime figures have also sought and obtained union backing, with the most notorious examples involving convicted money launderer George Alex.

Alex was found by a royal commission in 2015 to have regularly bribed a CFMEU boss in NSW, while the federal police alleged in Alex’s recent court case that the crime boss had built his Australian labour hire empire by “leveraging his contacts in the trade unions” and in large building companies.

But there are multiple examples of other labour hire firms with organised crime links.

One of them, OCC, was until earlier this year linked to several Melbourne underworld figures and to ex-AFL footballers, with the former using their connections in the CFMEU and in building firms to help win work on major government sites and expand rapidly.

Until mid-2021, OCC’s account manager was a member of a notorious Melbourne northern suburbs crime family who was arrested alongside murdered underworld figure Mark Moran in 2000 and charged with possessing amphetamine and an illegal pistol and silencer.

The crime figure joined OCC in 2019 but quit the firm two years later when the federal police arrested him for drug trafficking. OCC’s previous shareholders include Mark Moran’s son and Darren Harland, an associate of the Moran crime family with an extensive criminal history but who has claimed to have reformed.

However, sources said OCC’s current managing director, former AFL player Luke Livingstone, was an honest and respected businessman who had sought to remove all underworld-linked identities from the firm, instead using his network of football stars, including former Hawthorn captain Luke Hodge and ex-Eagles vice-captain Josh Kennedy, to help win work on major sites.

Another prominent labour hire firm with a long history of CFMEU backing has also had underworld links, albeit with the company’s long-time boss insisting his business is now clean.

In 2014, this masthead revealed how MC Labour, a longtime sponsor of AFL clubs, gave kickbacks to a CFMEU organiser (who resigned after the revelations), including free labour to help renovate his house in Melbourne’s north-east.

But while MC’s chief executive Marc Lunedei insists he has reformed his business, his son, one-time MC operations manager Matt Lunedei, developed underworld links during a stint in prison for aggravated burglary and theft.

Matt LunedeiCredit: Instagram

Matt Lunedei was close to infamous ex-bikie boss and fellow prison inmate Toby Mitchell, who in 2021 helped Matt recruit workers for MC’s workforce.

In response to questions from this masthead, Marc Lunedei said in a statement that MC Labour Group had no affiliation or association with criminal organisations or organised crime and his firm “does not conduct, accept or tolerate any unlawful behaviour”.

MC’s efforts, led by Lunedei snr, to clean up its business coincided with the loss of big construction contracts to competitor Top Up Labour, a firm with its own close ties to the CFMEU. For instance, Top Up employs the ex-wife of former CFMEU secretary Derek Christopher.

Toby Mitchell separately maintains a bikie-linked network with union ties.

One of Mitchell’s bikie-linked associates, former Mongols outlaw bikie gang member Joel Brown, was among the muscle called on by the CFMEU to defend its premises and organisers from an infamous anti-vaccination rally in Melbourne in September 2021.

Joel Brown getting tattoos in a picture from Toby Mitchell’s social media.Credit: Instagram

Brown can be seen on video emerging from the union headquarters and rushing at protesters. Brown could not be contacted.

Since 2020, Brown has been pushed onto several building companies in Victoria as a union delegate by CFMEU organisers, including this year by an influential organiser.

The Building Bad investigation has previously revealed how other bikie-linked figures, including two former Hells Angels chapter presidents and a Mongols chapter president, are CFMEU delegates.

Unpacking why the CFMEU has cultivated bikie links is difficult. While profit is a clear motive– the CFMEU, for instance, has pushed a bikie-linked caulking and line-marking company onto building sites – union and building industry insiders also point to the fact that certain building companies have also muscled up with figures linked to bikie gangs.

Base Piling, which is closely associated with former drug trafficker and Victorian Comanchero boss Amad “Jay” Malkoun, has grown rapidly over the past 18 months.

Its website says the firm is an “industry partner” of the CFMEU and of another construction sector company, Enviroprotect, which is owned by the former wife of ex-union boss John Setka and has previously been exposed as having received preferential union treatment.

There is no suggestion that Base Piling received special treatment because of those associations.

Former bikie boss Amad “Jay” Malkoun pictured at a promotion for his book. Credit: Jason South.

One of the owners of Base hung up the phone when queried about the firm’s links to Malkoun, while Malkoun did not respond to efforts to contact him.

Another prominent piling firm, LTE, has maintained its CFMEU relationship through a close relationship with underworld figure Mick Gatto.

New crane company Vamp has also secured lucrative contracts on CFMEU-controlled sites.

Vamp is managed by Ross Giammona, who was released from jail a decade ago after stabbing to death, in self-defence, a fellow inmate in prison. Giammona said he had “not been in trouble” since then.

Vamp Crane’s shareholding records reveal that, until early this year, one of Vamp’s owners was a business entity named in police intelligence as having deep suspected links to Middle Eastern organised crime and drug trafficking and which was recently targeted with fire-bombings.

Vamp Cranes’ current co-owner Chris Krotiris, who runs a business finance practice, said the former shareholder had not engaged in any wrongdoing but media reports about their criminal associations posed a situation with financiers, leading to their exit from the business in April.

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