Organised Crime - page 2

Always a mystery character, Ivan Markovics became more elusive than ever when inquiries were initiated into the whereabouts of perhaps millions of dollars paid by Australians and others for ‘knighthoods’ in his bogus order of the Knights of Malta. The organisation’s own ambassador-at-large, Miroslav Sulc, gem dealer and former St… Keep Reading

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the thousand-year old Knights of Malta may be pleased. A plethora of associations of knights emerged following exposure of the Ivan Markovic operation in 1985. Most disclaimed any connection with Markovics’s organisation, reported as having been infiltrated by a group of dubious… Keep Reading

For nearly one thousand years, the venerable religious order of the Knights of Malta endured all the traumas history could produce to survive as the most exclusive social club on earth. Its name has been a cherished symbol of chivalry in diplomatic circles around the world. In less than one… Keep Reading

The nexus between Australia and organised crime operations in America has been brought home in dramatic fashion to the Government of the United States. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan launched an all-out assault against the kingpins behind America’s drug trade. Allocating more than $200 million, and employing more than 1000… Keep Reading

As a favored haven, Australia has long been talked about as a ‘pot of gold’ or El Dorado for American mafia investment abroad. It is now literally true. It was discovered in 1985 that, in Sydney and Melbourne, mafia front companies had actually been set up to deal specifically in… Keep Reading

Two decades after the event, police files on gangsters in Miami, Florida, have unlocked the key to the emergence in Australia of sophisticated, international-style organised crime. Miami, more so than Las Vegas, Nevada, has been a free city’ — free from territorial monopoly rigidly enforced by crime families elsewhere in… Keep Reading

If the opium-heroin warlords of the Golden Triangle can maintain armies of thousands of men, and marihuana growers of Griffith can build grass castles, the man in the street has cause to shudder at the mind-boggling profits amassing in the hands of the hidden masterminds of Australia’s illicit drug trade.… Keep Reading

Almost every businessman, at one time or another, has endured the frustration of delays in having telephones connected or transferred. Not so in the illicit world of organised crime. For Telecom, Australia’s largest government instrumentality, has been used to facilitate the shadowy network of illegal bookmaking. As quick as police… Keep Reading

  The disappearance of Kings Cross newspaper publisher Juanita Nielsen has been one of Australia’s most intriguing mysteries. On Friday morning, 4 July 1975, Juanita Nielsen, then aged 38, went to an appointment at a Kings Cross nightclub — and afterwards disappeared. Although two men have since been gaoled for… Keep Reading

‘If you repay me not on such a day . . . Let the forfeit be . . . an equal pound Of your fair flesh.’ Such were the immortal words of Shylock, the usurious character penned by Shakespeare centuries ago Appropriately, twentieth-century loan sharking — very much the domain… Keep Reading