A Austrilia, bikies, triads, officials linked in drug smuggling ring

Australia
by ABC News
One of the nation's biggest investigations into organised crime has exposed an international drug importation syndicate with links to the Comancheros outlaw bikie gang, Chinese triads and corrupt Australian officials

Photo: Dean Lewins

Operation Hoffman, a landmark multi-agency investigation led by the Australian Crime Commission, has also revealed the deep links between drug importers and rogue Australian maritime workers.

A joint ABC Four Corners and The Age investigation into organised crime can also reveal that:

•In Victoria, authorities have uncovered links between corrupt Melbourne port workers, the Hells Angels and prominent Italian criminals
•NSW police have identified a group of drug-importing Sydney port workers with government maritime security cards who have been active since 2004
•Law enforcement agencies in Sydney recently updated a list of 150 organised crime targets in NSW alone
The two-year Operation Hoffman has uncovered how multi-million-dollar crime syndicates are operating like multinational enterprises, evading police by drawing on local and overseas resources and the latest technology.

It has led to major ecstasy, heroin and crystal methamphetamine drug busts across Australia, the biggest-ever drug bust on the Pacific island group of Tonga, and the discovery in May last year of a bikie armoury in Sydney - including automatic weapons and imitation police equipment.

Those arrested include alleged drug runners with links to Chinese triads and the Perth president of the Comancheros, Steven Milenkovski.

Despite Hoffman severely damaging the bikie group, the Comancheros have continued establishing a foothold in Melbourne under the control of local club controller Amad 'Jay' Malkhoun, a convicted heroin trafficker with interests in several Melbourne strip clubs.

One of Hoffman's key targets is Hakan Ayik, 32, from Sydney, who is understood to have worked as the local manager of an international drug syndicate with strong links to the triads and which used domestic criminal networks, including outlaw bikie clubs, as distributors and to provide muscle.

NSW police intelligence describes Ayik as a ''very serious money maker'' who ''generates a lot of money'' for the Comancheros and has multiple links to waterfront workers. Operation Hoffman ended earlier this month after NSW police issued an arrest warrant for Ayik for drug trafficking. It is believed he is now on the run.

The crime syndicate targeted by Hoffman also has links to allegedly corrupt NSW police analyst Terry Gregoriou, who was charged last December for allegedly leaking police files to the Comancheros via an intermediary.

The syndicate has also cultivated contacts with figures with access to the NSW prison system - including a serving prison officer - to pass money and messages to jailed crime figures.

Operation Hoffman's success lies in the cooperative efforts of traditionally mistrustful state and federal policing agencies, including NSW police, the NSW Crime Commission, the Australian Federal Police and anti-money laundering agency Austrac.

However, a senior law enforcement insider has revealed to Four Corners that despite its success, inadequate resourcing meant Operation Hoffman was unable to reach its full potential.

He said the criminal network it targeted "will reform very, very quickly". The insider said the ACC needed far more investigators to run major inquiries targeting the movement of illicit funds offshore, crucial to Operation Hoffman.

Under-resourced

The consensus among senior police is that the ACC is badly under-resourced given the size and reach, here and abroad, of Australia's new breed of technologically savvy and well-resourced underworld figures.

Federal Labor Senator Steve Hutchins, who is briefed by senior police as chairman of the ACC parliamentary committee, told Four Corners that major drug seizures had not affected the supply or price of drugs, which indicated Australia was clearly "not winning that war [against drug trafficking]".

Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland said that drug data supported the view that policing agencies were only "making a small number of seizures in the total volume of drugs'' that enter the country.

This view is backed by former NSW police assistant commissioner Clive Small and the former head of Victoria's Purana gangland murder taskforce, Jim O'Brien.

"You'd have to be kidding yourself if you thought you were getting any more than probably 10 or 15 per cent off the street," Mr O'Brien said.

Senator Hutchins also called for reforms to combat organised crime on the waterfront because corruption in the sector was aiding the importation of drugs.

"The law enforcement agencies have been exposing what's been going on [on the waterfront] ... it's whether or not we as politicians are prepared to give them the weapons ... they need to combat it," he said.

Senior police sources have said the Federal Government's wharf security regime is a failure. The launching of a state and federal policing taskforce to combat organised crime on the wharves in NSW has been slowed due to inter-agency talks. It is set to be fully operational in the next fortnight