Australasian biker news

Road Scholars~
[OZ] From Russia with hate
Sun Apr 10, 2005 12:29pm
4.154.4.212

From Russia with hate

EXCLUSIVE By CHARLES MIRANDA

April 11, 2005

POLICE have identified up to 50 Russian organised crime figures in Sydney establishing bases for white-collar fraud, money laundering, child pornography and drug trafficking.

One criminal figure is a 50-year-old Russian tourist who has been using a US passport to visit Australia and establish links with a well-known Kings Cross underworld figure.

The latest criminal alliance has sparked concerns within both NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police into the expanding influence of Russian organised crime in Australia, particularly in Sydney's eastern beaches.

The Kings Cross underworld figure, who police suspect uses some members of the Bandido outlaw motorcycle gang for debt collection and drug distribution, was shot at years ago for trying to establish links with Asian crime groups.

The American-Russian has strong links with the North European ecstasy market and late last year was plotting with local Sydney identities to bring in a large amount of amphetamines and other drugs.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that another "coalition" of Russian criminals, linked to the former Soviet Union's KGB spy group, has been extorting money from gambling and other financial internet-based sites after threatening them with crippling viruses.

Amounts of between $20,000 and $40,000 have been sought from each company.

Russian groups have even been trying to defraud the Federal Government's own trade commission Austrade to establish bogus front companies and receive export benefits and assistance.

In the first admission of the extent of the problem, The Daily Telegraph has learned details of a confidential Australian Federal Police intelligence report that says Russian organised crime is involved in heroin supply, complex fraud, murder, extortion, false passports, prostitution, internet child pornography and foreign acquisition and takeovers of genuine companies to launder monies.

"The above offences are in relation to suspected ROC [Russian organised crime] individuals based in Australia," the report states.

Up to $60 million is understood to have been laundered in Australia by Russians using bogus offshore "banks" in Pacific nations such as Nauru, Tonga and Vanuatu.

The murder is believed to relate to the 2000 execution style killing in the Gold Coast of former KGB colonel Geunnadi Bernovski.

The report cites joint investigations with the FBI in the US and New Zealand police.

It states there are "coalitions of people of Eastern European descent" whose criminal activities run from Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast.

Crime link made with four words

By CHARLES MIRANDA and RHETT WATSON

April 11, 2005

THE telephone call intercepted by the covert NSW police team was just four words long.

"Let's have a meeting," said the thick Russian-accented Eastern Suburbs man to the Kings Cross underworld figure.

But with those words recorded by police in 2003, a meeting was arranged 20,000km away at a cafe in Amsterdam with leading Russian organised crime figures and Sydney associates plotting to smuggle several kilograms of drugs into Australia.

The Daily Telegraph has learned the previously unreported meeting came as a shock to police who had never linked the two leading Sydney crime identities, one being the well-known Kings Cross heavy and the other a 50-year-old Russian.

Intelligence sources said the Russian man travels regularly to Australia on a US passport and tourist visa, having escaped the crumbling Soviet regime by posing as a Jew and migrating to Israel.

After hearing of the arranged meeting, police tracked suspects from Sydney to an Asian air hub, suspected to have been Kuala Lumpur, then on to a connecting flight to Barcelona, then on to a Spanish regional destination before ending up in the Dutch coffee shop specifically closed to host the small Russian mafia group.

The drug shipment is not believed to have gone ahead after an argument over money payments and shipping problems.

But the link between criminals gangs sparked renewed interest in the tentacles of Russian organised crime which first emerged in Sydney in 1993 with the arrest of drug lord and now fugitive Arkidy "Alex" Nuchimov.

In February 1993, Nuchimov was committed to stand trial for attempting to import 20kgs of cocaine on behalf of two undercover police officers who posed as drug dealers.

As part of their cover, the officers hired Porsches and ate at some of Sydney's best restaurants.

On January 21, 1994, just days before his matter was to go to trial Nuchimov was allowed out of Parramatta jail to go, under escort, to a dentist in Bondi.

As he was in the chair a gunman burst into the surgery fired two shots in the air, overpowered the two guards and freed his friend.

Neither man has been seen since.

But a police task force last year found the now 50-year-old Nuchimov was suspected of being the mastermind behind organised Russian crime in Sydney, running criminal enterprises from his home in Central Europe via a network of younger close associates.