YONI BASHAN POLICE REPORTER
A DRUG dealer who fled the country after a Rebels bikie was shot dead has been named NSW's public enemy number one.Anthony Tan, 26, is believed to be back and hiding in Sydney, six months after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Detectives attached to Strike Force Tirage have been investigating Tan, who now tops the state's most wanted list, for more than two years since the murder of Rebels bikie Edin "Boz" Smajovic.
Smajovic, 23, had gone to the Macarthur Auto Centre in Campbelltown with another Rebels bikie on the afternoon of January 9, 2009, to collect money from Tan.
Smajovic confronted Tan and the situation quickly escalated - standing about a metre apart, both pulled out their guns and pointed them at each other. Locked in a Mexican stand-off, Tan, Smajovic and two other men - Tan's business partner and the other Rebels bikie - began screaming at each other to drop their weapons.
Detective Sergeant Keith Bristow said the stalemate mimicked the final moments of the cult-film Reservoir Dogs, in which three men in a similar impasse simultaneously shoot each other. Both men ended up firing their guns, leaving Tan with a bullet wound to his neck and Smajovic dying on the ground from a fatal shot to his heart.
Police agreed to release a photograph of Tan following a request by The Sunday Telegraph - the image was taken in the days after the murder as he recovered from his bullet wound in hospital. "The difficulty was trying to determine who actually fired their gun first," Mr Bristow said.
"That was key to this investigation. But we now know as a result of evidence from a witness, coupled with a ballistics expert, that Tan fired the first shot."
Mr Bristow said Tan left the country in the days after the shooting and fled to his homeland, Vietnam.
Immigration records indicate he has never officially returned to Australia, however police have sources of information which indicate he has been back in Sydney several times since the shooting.
"We know he's been travelling between Vietnam and Australia and to do that, he would have to be travelling on false documents," Mr Bristow said.
In the months after the shooting, police appealed for the second Rebels bikie who was with Smajovic when he died, to come forward and assist police.
Detectives provided The Sunday Telegraph with an artist's impression of the man, who came forward after seeing his face in this newspaper.
Tan is the younger brother of notorious Sydney crime figure Ken Tan, who is currently serving an eight-year jail sentence for a botched drive-by shooting which saw an innocent man killed.
His business partner, who can't be named, is currently awaiting trial after being arrested just months after Smajovic's murder over a series of highly-publicised ATM attacks around Sydney.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/meet-nsws-most-wanted-man/story-e6freuy9-1226145334645
