Nike Bikies targetted in Task Force Masima raids in Brisbane
- The Courier-Mail
- March 24, 2014
The “Nike Bikies” accused of standing over celebrity hairdresser Fadi Haddad could be referred to a Royal Commission into organised crime and the construction industry, police say.
Salon owner Mr Haddad was the biggest financial target in a web of alleged Bandidos rackets targeting ordinary Queenslanders, including one gym-goer beaten so badly his eye was forced into his brain cavity.
The rackets were smashed in dawn raids by Task Force Maxima that delivered the average annual number of extortion charges statewide in a single morning.
A dozen people – half of them allegedly former gang presidents and sergeants-at-arms – were scooped up on 46 charges, including 37 of extortion.
Mr Haddad closed his Brisbane salon last year after it was stormed by Bandidos leaders who threatened violence in front of terrified customers and staff and demanded $150,000.
Then-Centro chapter president George Bejat and his sergeant-at-arms Zivko Stojakovic were collecting on a $100,000 debt originally owed to GT Building Developments for fitting out a hairdressing salon on the Gold Coast, police will allege.
Bejat, 28, who owns a share of a tattoo parlour on Milton’s Park Rd cafe strip with Stojakovic, 27, recently bought a $130,000 Lamborghini. Ex-West End chapter president Anthony Toumpas faces five counts of extortion and assault, while a warrant is out for his former sergeant-at-arms, currently in Thailand, for extortion, assault, violent threats and stalking.
Det Supt Niland said the operation had unmasked “the true nature of these gangs who work together to standover and bully people”.
GT Building Developments was in dispute with Mr Haddad over its work on a salon he opened within the luxury Hilton Hotel development on the Gold Coast.
The building firm is part-owned by Gianni Grollo, a cousin of Melbourne building magnate Daniel Grollo and son-in-law of pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson.
Gianni Grollo’s business partner Kris Chambers was taken for questioning by detectives, who led him through the firm’s Beenleigh office but did not lay any charges.
Another co-owner of the firm, David Tomsic, told The Courier-Mail that he did not believe the firm had referred the debt to the bikies.
“To me it sounds like a crock of shit. It’s not his nature.” he said. “All I know is the guy we done a job for owed some money and I know Kris spoke to him a couple of times, I spoke to him a couple of times, but as for bikies and all that, it just sounds like a load of shit.”