Urbi et Orbi: Pope on the ropes

As the Easter Sunday Catholic faithful wait outside St Peter’s for Benedict XVI to deliver his tenth papal address, the Church itself has come under unprecedented attack and criticism. Numerous controversies have emerged about the protection of child-molesting priest in many countries including Germany, the US and Ireland with the Pope implicated in many of the scandals.

Although the Church has addressed some of the concerns, its preference is to adopt a siege mentality as the charges multiply. The Pope downplayed the charges as “petty gossip” while the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, has accused the media of a "clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators".

One of the Pope’s apologists, Vatican priest Raniero Cantalamessa noted Easter and Passover fell during the same week this year and said this led him to think of comparisons with the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognise the recurring symptoms,” Cantalamessa said. “The use of stereotypes [and] the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” However a US advocate for sexual abuse victims said the comparison was “breathtakingly callous and misguided.” David Clohessy said “men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims and to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

The public scrutiny into child sex crimes is becoming deeply uncomfortable for the Church and indeed for Benedict himself. In Germany, Father Peter Hullermann has become the focus of an expanding sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled the Pope. Hullermann was a priest in northern Germany with an addiction to sexual abuse of children. He was transferred to Munich for therapy where Pope Paul VI had appointed Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop in 1977. Ratzinger was copied in on a 1980 memo which said Hullermann would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. A German court eventually convicted Hullermann of further child abuse in 1986 but the church still took no action to stop him from working with children. The Archdiocese has acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made with Hullermann, but said it was the fault of people reporting to Ratzinger rather than to the cardinal himself.

In the US, the news is no better for the Pope. As the then leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981-2005), he was also implicated in the scandal of the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lawrence C. Murphy worked at the school from 1950 to 1974 initially as chaplain and later as director. Murphy admitted he sexually abused deaf boys for 22 years. Victims tried for more than three decades to bring him to justice, but recent documents show Ratzinger’s office neither defrocked him nor referred him for prosecution but instead encouraged “pastoral action” to resolve the problem. In the end Murphy solved the problem for the Vatican by conveniently dying before the trial could proceed.

In Ireland too, sex scandals have left the reputation of the Church in tatters (though it hasn’t stopped them from trying to enforce Good Friday alcohol bans). There have been three official Irish state-sanctioned investigations into the Church’s abuse of children. The most recent and most comprehensive, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse released its damning report last year which found widespread physical and emotional abuse were a feature of outdated Catholic-run institutions and sex abuse was endemic, particularly at boy’s institutions and known to Church authorities.

Sexual offenders were usually transferred elsewhere where they were free to continue abusing other children. The Church relied on a culture of secrecy, a compliant Education department and a fear of retribution to keep matters quiet. While the Pope has recently blasted the Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgement”, his apology did not address the Vatican's own role nor did it endorse the report finding that the church leadership was to blame for the scale and longevity of abuse heaped on Irish children throughout the 20th century.

That would have been a step too far for the Vatican as it would mean having to confront its own rulebook. The Catholic Church’s unnatural insistence on celibacy for its priests has contributed greatly to the problems in the US, Germany, Ireland and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that men without sexual access to women looked for gratification elsewhere, particularly among young and vulnerable people without the access or knowledge about how to complain about their treatment. And while the Church professes to be pro-life, care for its flock seems to stop at birth. The Church continues to see sexual offence as a risk only in terms of the potential for scandal and bad publicity. The danger to children has never been taken into account. This obsessive, cynical and secretive accretion of power at all costs is now coming back to bite the Church badly.

Scammers use Haiti earthquake for online fraud

The Haiti earthquake had an unintended consequence of driving up phishing and scam attacks across the Internet in the first month of this year. In the days after the Haiti quake, scammers asked users to donate money to a charity however any donation disappeared into an offshore bank account. Building on this, spammers began to send phishing messages, pretending to be from legitimate organisations like UNICEF. Hackers also took advantage of the tragedy to deliver malware. In one example, users download a Trojan when they click on the link to view a supposed video of the earthquake damage. The findings were in the monthly State of Spam and Phishing report from Symantec. (photo by alex_lee2001)

The report found both scam and phishing categories doubled as in percentage of all spam in January 2010 compared to a month earlier. The total of scam and phishing messages came in at 21 percent of all spam, which is the highest level recorded since the inception of the report. As well as Haitian scams, the report found the well-known Nigerian 419 scam (named for the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes) was on the rise again as was online pharmacy spam.

Symantec say spammers have changed their tactics regarding online pharmacy spam. They have now taken to using subject lines such as “Must-Know Rules of Better Shopping” and “You Must Know About This Promotion” which are vaguer than “RE: SALE 70% OFF on Pfizer.” Other misleading subject lines such as “Confirmation Mail” and “Special Ticket Receipt” were also used for online pharmacy spam messages.

They also say phishing attacks are getting more and more targeted in nature and are focused on attacking major brands rather than being mass attacks. Symantec observed a 25 percent decrease from the previous month in all phishing attacks. The decline was primarily due to a decrease in the volume of phishing toolkit attacks which have halved from the previous month. A 16 percent decrease was observed in non-English phishing sites as well. More than 95 Web hosting services were used, which accounted for 13 percent of all phishing attacks, a decrease of 12 percent in total Web host URLs when compared to the previous month.

The US remains the most likely point of origin of spam. Approximately one in four of all spam is American-based with Brazil next most likely far behind in second place with just 6 percent. India, Germany and Netherlands are responsible for 5 percent each. The US is even more dominant in the categories of geo-location of phishing lures and hosts with 52 percent of the former category and 49 percent of the latter. Germany is second far behind with 6 percent in both categories.

Symantec notes that China has clamped down on spamming by suspending new overseas .cn domain registrations. The China Internet Network Information Center stated this suspension will allow them to implement a better procedure to verify registrant information from overseas registrations. This was a follow-up action to a related move in mid-December that required additional paperwork with registrations. As a result, spam messages with .cn domain URL dropped by more than half in January, compared to December with a steep drop towards end of January.

The report also found a new trend in adult oriented phishing. The phishing site tempts the unwary by promising free pornography after logging in or signing up. These scams affect users who enter their credentials in the hopes of obtaining pornography. Upon entering login credentials, the site redirects to a pornographic website before leading to a fake antivirus site containing malicious code. An incredible 92 percent of adult phishing scams were on social networking sites. The phishing sites were created using free webhosting services.

The report offers advice so familiar it beggars belief so many people are still falling victims. It talks about unsubscribing from lists, keeping your mail address secret, deleting all spam, avoid clicking on suspicious links and email attachments or replying to spam, don’t fill in forms online that ask for personal information and finally don’t forward virus warnings which are usually hoaxes. Spamming is a multi-billion dollar industry that relies on the truth of the hoary phrase that “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

Indian students in Australia asked to stop protests against racial violence

Indian community leaders in Australia have asked students protesting against the racial attacks to put an end to their street rallies, saying they have served their purpose. Yadu Singh, coordinator of the Indian Consul General's community committee on Indian students' issues, said all parties have agreed to stop the rallies which have been going for three days in Sydney’s Harris Park. “They are disrupting the normal life of the people in the suburbs,” he said.

The protests began in Melbourne when Indian students were incensed by a wave of violence including a screwdriver stabbing which left one man in hospital. Attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney have dominated Indian media headlines for almost three weeks. Though exact current figures are hard to come by, at least 11 Indians have been attacked or mugged in the past month. Some say the problem has been growing for several years. Bloomberg reports that violent crime against Indian students has risen by a third in the past year in the state of Victoria with 1,447 assaults in the 12 months to June 2008.

The problem has been brewing for several months. On 1 December 28 year old Sukhraj Singh was attacked and brutally beaten up at a Sunshine Indian grocery store where he was about to buy naan bread for a party. Singh was left in a coma for three weeks. He still suffers from dizziness, a lack of balance and anxiety. Five men of varying ethnic background have been charged with his beating and three have pleaded guilty. Singh says he still has no idea if the attack was racially motivated. Western districts police Commander Trevor Carter told The Herald-Sun violence was almost never racially related to race, but with the intention of stealing phones and wallets.

Carter’s statement is supported by the rationale offered by another Indian student who is the friend of a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Adelaide. The sociologist blamed the increasing casualisation of the workforce in Australia and decreases in housing affordability. Jobs are less stable and people spend more time commuting between work and home. Overseas students on low-paying casual work are among the worst affected forced to travel longer distances, alone and late at night, all increasing their vulnerability to attack.

But another Melbourne victim, Sourabh Sharma, has no doubts racism is the underlying cause. Sourabh was coming home by train from a workshift at KFC when six young men boarded at Aircraft station, between Laverton and Hoppers Crossing. They attacked him, took his phone and bag and kicked him in the head and face and ribs, while laughing and dishing out racial abuse. The attackers got off at the next station. Sourabh was left unconscious and bleeding, with broken teeth and a fractured cheekbone.

The role of the Indian media has been crucial in stoking up reaction with its emotive and racially inspired descriptions of "curry bashing". Australian High Commissioner to India John McCarthy said their constant coverage of the issue had done inestimable damage to Indian-Australian relations. "India's voracious 24-hour cable news channels helped stoke the wave of fear and outrage among Indians in both countries,” he said. McCarthy said that although the news cycle was now coming to an end, negative perceptions of Australia would linger. “You can't have three weeks of that sort of television without the perception of Australia among Indians being damaged."

Australia stands to lose considerable income from the education industry if South Asians vote with their feet. 97,000 Indians are currently studying in Australia contributing $16 billion to the local economy. They make up 18 percent of the total student population second only to China. Almost half of these are in Victoria. The federal Government's $3.5 million campaign to attract more Indian students as a recession busting measure is now in serious jeopardy.

Belatedly, authorities have begun to act. In May Victoria launched a helpline to assist Indian attack victims. Last week Victorian Premier John Brumby announced new measures to improve safety at railway stations with a record of violent behaviour. The measures include additional patrols by uniform police, transit members, the dog squad, mounted branch and air-wing, as well as traffic operations and booze buses targeting trouble sports in and around Sunshine, St Albans, Thomastown and the Clayton and Dandenong areas.

This is a good start, but is it enough? Writing for The Times of India, Sarina Singh says perception appears to be the fundamental stumbling block. Singh is an Australian of Indian descent who says the federal government has acted too late to stop the rot. She agrees with Indian student groups who have requested a more multicultural police force. “As someone who has specialised in travel writing about the sub-continent,” she was "aware of the damage that can be done by inadvertent cultural misunderstanding.”

But this is not high on Australia’s priorities. Multiculturalism has been marginalised by federal governments for over a decade. As David Ingram wrote in New Matilda Australia has “dropped the ball on multiculturalism. He said the media and ethnic groups had become complacent because they thought the battle had been won. Then the antagonistic Howard Government removed the phrase from the national discourse replacing it with the more strident “new nationalism”.

Michael Clyne says the Rudd government has followed this “by a discourse of covert exclusion through invisibility.” Clyne says the Prime Minister is not on public record using the term multiculturalism or any synonym such as "cultural diversity" when referring to Australian society. Nor is there a minister for multicultural affairs. “Social inclusion ought to empower all sections of Australian society to fulfil their potential and to make their contribution to the nation from their background and experience,” says Clyne. We have some way to go to get there but multi-million dollar losses may concentrate the minds wonderfully.

Queensland presses on with anti-bikie laws despite Victorian veto

Queensland Attorney-General Cameron Dick (pictured) denied today that state and territory jurisdictions had backed down on a national approach to anti-bikie laws. At a meeting of federal, state and territory Attorneys-General in Canberra last Thursday, Victoria and the ACT refused to support the uniform adoption of laws aimed specifically at bikie gangs.

However Dick told Woolly Days today he was satisfied he had achieved “a solid national response” on the issue of criminal activities of outlaw motorcycle gangs. “The clear message from last week's meeting is that there will be no safe havens for bikie gangs in any state or territory in Australia,” he said.

The amended approach will not focus specifically on motorbike gangs but will target all forms of organised crime. The state Attorney-General said the agreement provides a framework for Queensland to ensure its proposed legislation will be “effective and supported nationwide”. “I am very pleased that the work we are undertaking here will be supported in all other jurisdictions,” he said.

The proposed national laws allow for the confiscation of crime proceeds, coercive questioning powers, and will give police the ability to engage in controlled operations. However, Victoria Attorney-General Rob Hulls baulked at national provisions that would have allowed criminal bike gangs to be outlawed. Hulls refusal gave the Opposition spokesman Robert Clark the opportunity to use a colourful phrase: “the risk of Victoria becoming Australia's soft underbelly of bikie crime has become even greater."

In any case Queensland is independently developing legislative options for anti-association and anti-consorting laws for cabinet's consideration. Dick said today he would be speaking to the Police Minister Neil Roberts to discuss “any additional areas which need to be considered in order to meet the requirements of this framework.”

South Australia was the first state to introduce anti-bike laws when it passed The Serious and Organised Crime (Control) Act (pdf) in 2008. The laws give the state Attorney General wide discretionary powers to deem organisations 'criminal' (but do not adequately define organised crime) and there is no appeals process for organisations branded under the legislation. There is also a ‘guilt by association’ provision and convictions carry a maximum period of imprisonment of five years.

NSW followed suit last month when it rushed in laws in the wake of a violent brawl at Sydney Airport in which a 29-year-old man was bludgeoned to death with a metal pole. Its laws were even tougher than SA’s as there was no system of warning that charges would be laid if targeted bikies continue to associate with each other. Queensland, WA and the Northern Territory have also said they would introduce similar laws.

However critics say the laws are absurd and unfair. Last weekend the newly formed United Motorcycle Council of Queensland (UMCQ) said the proposed laws were discriminatory. The council which represents 17 clubs says the laws will target innocent bikie members. Meanwhile Greg Barns in Crikey said last month the laws were “largely unenforceable, cement in law the concept of guilt by association and would do nothing to lessen the problem of bikie gangs’ violence because they completely miss the point - which is that bikie gangs thrive on our refusal to decriminalise drugs.”

Here at Woolly Days, I also argued recently that the laws were a moral panic and they only dealt with a perception while “the real bikie problem will only be driven underground.” Even with Victoria’s refusal to play ball, nothing I have heard since the Attorneys-General meeting causes me to believe any different. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Anti-Bikie laws and moral panic

State and territory governments across Australia are rushing new and dangerous laws onto the statute books to combat what has been deemed the latest public enemy: motorbike gangs. Australian media have been keen to play up the perceived problem with “spates of shocking violence” while governments across the nation rub their hands in glee with the opportunity to enact “tough anti-bikie laws”. However, there are justifiable concerns that these draconian new laws are open to abuse and are effectively the equivalent of anti-terrorism laws for domestic uses.

South Australia was the first state to introduce anti-bikie laws nine months ago based on similar Canadian laws. There gang membership can attract a prison sentence of five years. Announcing the laws in 2007, Premier Mike Rann said at the time they were designed to disrupt criminal activity, dismantle organised crime networks and discourage others from trying to set up in South Australia. Among the law’s powers are: giving courts the power to control with whom gang members can associate with, issuing Public Safety Orders to ban gangs from specified places, prohibiting the possession of hydroponic equipment such as high intensity lights and carbon filters, confiscating “unexplained wealth” and introducing a presumption against bail for gang members charged with serious or violent offences and breaches of control orders. Rann said there were eight known criminal bikie gangs with bases in South Australia with about 250 hardcore members.

The Biker Forum called the SA laws “the toughest anti-bikie laws in the world”. The writer was keen to make a distinction between motorcycle gangs and people who love motorbikes. The Queensland based “grotbag” said there are thousands of Gold Coasters who love to ride motorbikes. “Let's never confuse them with motorcycle gangs, those groups of mainly men whose illicit drug trafficking, standover tactics, extortion, money laundering, weapons trade and public disturbances have earned them a fearsome reputation,” he (or she) wrote. “Annual hospital toy runs on one day of the year don't make up for their criminal behaviour on the other 364 days.”

However Monash University academic and bikie gang expert Dr Arthur Veno said South Australia is undergoing a “moral panic attack” and called for the establishment of an independent commission against corruption. Veno said the SA legislation, implemented as part of the Serious and Organised Crime Act, was draconian and did not have any basis in fact. He said the Rann Government had labelled outlaw motorcycle clubs as public enemy number one despite the facts not supporting the assertion. “Crime attributable to bikie gangs as a proportion of total crime is extremely low - less than one per cent,” he said. “No one is saying that these clubs are criminal free, but the Rann Government and the South Australian Police are basically wasting taxpayers' money to target an element of society which is responsible for a miniscule amount of crime."

The new law has several problems. They provide the Attorney General with wide discretionary powers to deem organisations 'criminal'; they don’t adequately define organised crime; and they provide no appeals process for those organisations branded under the legislation. As well, the guilt by association provisions are a deep concern. Under the act, anyone who associates with “persons of a prescribed class” (a member of an outlawed organisation) can be convicted if they meet six or more times in 12 months. Though there are provisions for family members and employers, they can be overruled and a conviction carries a maximum period of imprisonment of five years.

There are reports that NSW’s proposed new laws are tougher still. Sydney Airport was the scene of the most prominent bikie attack recently when a man was killed at the domestic terminal on 22 March. Under Premier Nathan Rees’ new laws, motorcycle gangs would be outlawed, the type of employment bikies can seek would be restricted and police intelligence networks would be expanded. Once again it is a draconian solution to a noisy but, on the whole, tiny problem. As Arthur Veno says “in NSW, all gang crime accounts for 0.6 per cent of total crime. Now, how much resources do we want to pour down that tube?”

But the public (read: media) clamour “to do something about it” is proving too difficult for politicians to resist. On the weekend, the Northern Territory Police Commissioner called for similar legislation to outlaw bikie gangs. Commissioner Paul White claimed the groups would “stop at nothing." And were involved in murder, intimidation, violence, and stand-over tactics. This seemed to be a lot of activity for a small group. Even White admitted there were “only a dozen Hell's Angels members in the Territory.” Nevertheless he got his wish today. Attorney-general Delia Lawrie announced new laws saying she not want bikie gangs arriving from other states. The laws allow streamlined court orders so gang clubroom fortifications could be dismantled, place and membership restrictions, and a declaration process to outlaw certain gangs.

The Not In My Backyard attitude is now likely to spread to Queensland. As are the meaningless slogans. The State Government doesn’t want the Sunshine State to become a "safe haven" for outlawed motorcycle gangs while the cabinet met today in order to consider its own “crack down”. Newly re-elected Premier Anna Bligh accidentally left the cat out of the bag why the legislation was being fast-tracked. "New South Wales has decided it needs to act quickly, and I don't believe Queensland should be exposed in a context where New South Wales is acting,” she said. While Bligh meant legal exposure, her issue is media exposure and avoiding a reputation of being soft on crime. While governments prefer to deal with perception, the real bikie problem will only be driven underground. Meanwhile, we can fully expect the scope of the laws to be broadened to cover the next panic du jour, whatever that might be.

Jake Adelstein defies Yakuza death threats

In a brave article in the Washington Post last month, a Japanese-based American journalist blew the lid on Yakuza activities in Japan and abroad. The article is remarkable for Jake Adelstein’s rare insights into criminal activities that infect every aspect of Japanese society. Its wisdom is also hard won: the article’s author has received death threats from the Yakuza but refuses to be silenced. Adelstein is a rarity; a “gaijin” or foreigner who has immersed himself in the dark world of Japanese organised crime.

While most people outside Japan think of it as a law-abiding country, there are an estimated 1.3 million members of the Yakuza and they infiltrate every aspect of Japanese society. Their origins are shrouded in Japanese history; some believe they emerged from groups of leaderless samurai who either stole or gambled for a living. A group of violent yakuza emerged in Japan during the period of rapid industrialisation that followed World War II and took control of the black market. Various groups took over different industries and most now have very complex organisational structure. The yakuza have also spread to California where they have made alliances with Korean and Vietnamese gangs as well as more traditional partnerships with the Chinese triads. The bonds between members, and the bribes they pay to officials, make information on their activities very hard to come by.

One of the Yakuza’s biggest enemies is a Missouri-born journalist. Jake Adelstein was the first American ever hired as a regular staff writer for a major Japanese newspaper. He came to Japan as a graduate student, took the Japanese press entrance exam and became a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Yomiuri Shimbun is one of four national newspapers in Japan. This 120 years old institution has a circulation exceeding 10 million papers a day making it the biggest circulation newspaper in the world. Adelstein was one of two thousand journalists employed by Yomiuri and he was placed on their crime beat.

Though he initially knew nothing of organised crime in Japan, it wasn’t long before following Yakuza prostitution and extortion rackets would become part of his life. Adelstein used his charm to befriend cops and criminals alike and got on well with most of them because of his own outsider status. Adelstein noticed that over the last seven years the Yakuza has changed its tactics. It has moved out of traditional money-making schemes such as prostitution, gambling, drugs and protection and into high finance. Tokyo police have identified more than 800 yakuza front companies which masquerade as investment and auditing firms, construction companies and even pastry shops. They are now moving money offshore and have set up their own bank in California. Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission now has an index of more than 50 listed companies with ties to organized crime. Adelstein said the Japanese market is so infested with criminals that Osaka Securities Exchange officials review all listed companies in March this year and expelled those it found to have links with the Yakuza.

Adelstein’s mistake was to alienate Goto Tadamasa, one of the more psychopathic Yakuza bosses. Tadamasa is head of the Tokyo based Goto-Gumi gang and has a reputation as the “John Gotti of Japan”. According to Adelstein, Tadamasa is an unforgiving sort given to “doing things like driving dump trucks into pachinko parlours that won't pay protection money.” In 2005 Adelstein researched a story about Tadamasa’s involvement with the FBI. He found out that four years earlier the mobster agreed to provide information about yamaguchi-gumi (Japan’s largest Yakuza syndicate) activities in America in exchange for a visa to get a liver transplant operation in California. Tadamasa jumped a long queue to receive the life-saving operation from a world-renowned liver surgeon and donated a large amount of money to the hospital in return. Tadamasa threatened to kill Adelstein if he wrote a story about it. One of Tadamasa’s underlings gave the journalist a chilling message: “Erase the story or be erased”.

Adelstein (pictured left) took advice from one of his friends in the police department. He decided discretion was the better part of staying alive. He not only abandoned the scoop but also resigned from the Yomiuri Shimbun two months later. But Adelstein planned to write about it in a book banking on Goto's poor health to ensure he'd be dead by the time it came out. However disaster struck in November 2007 when the book contents were leaked to the media. Now Adelstein and his Japanese wife and child require 24-hour protection from the FBI and Tokyo Police. The book is called Tokyo Vice and will be available for publication in November. Adelstein said his aim in writing the book was the hope "to be such a public target that the calculation of repercussions of whacking me is so detrimental that nobody wants to do it."

Tony Mokbel offers deal to police to beat murder rap

Melbourne drug baron Tony Mokbel has offered to cut a deal with Australian police in order to cut short his extradition proceedings from Greece. Speaking to journalists in Athens last night during a court adjournment he offered to return to Australia in exchange for police dropping murder charges in favour of drug charges. With five levels of courts in Greece, Mokbel is capable of dragging out extradition for an indefinite period.

The 41 year old Mokbel appeared in a Greek court charged with possessing false documents. Prosecutors alleged Mokbel held a false passport and driving licence and Mokbel has denied the charges. The case has been adjourned to 22 June pending a police report. The charge has a maximum penalty of one year jail but is unlikely to affect the Australian extradition bid.

Mokbel was arrested on Tuesday in Athens after 15 months on the run posing as international trader “Stephen Papas”. Immediately, the Australian Federal Police issued a formal extradition request on one count of murder and five of drug trafficking. His Greek lawyer Yiannis Vlachos has moved to fight the extradition order claiming his client will not receive a fair trial in Australia.

Mokbel was on trial in March 2006 in the Victorian Supreme Court charged with importing 2.9 kg of cocaine when he absconded. Mokbel was found guilty in absentia and sentenced to 12 years. He was later charged with the 2004 murder of fellow druglord Lewis Moran. Earlier this year a hitman named Noel Faure pleaded guilty to his murder. Faure told the court that Mokbel and another man, Carl Williams, paid Faure $140,000 to execute Moran.

Antonios Sajih Mokbel was born in 1965. His family were from the small town of Achache in north Lebanon. His father worked in Kuwait for 15 years before moving to Australia. Mokbel was born in Kuwait and moved to Melbourne with the family. He went to Moreland High School in the 1970s but his desire to make money meant he was never destined for tertiary education.

He got his first job as a dishwasher at a suburban nightclub before he became a waiter. He then started working security. Mokbel was not a large man but he was a smooth talker able to persuade people to his point of view without using overt violence. In 1984, aged 19 he bought his first business, a milk bar in the Melbourne suburb of Rosanna. Aged 24 he married Carmel and they had two children. They worked long and hard but had to sell up without making any money.

In 1987 he bought an Italian restaurant in Boronia. This business was more successful and by 1997 he was able to expand by opening T Jays restaurant in Brunswick and becoming a property developer. By now Mokbel had become involved in drug trafficking. In 1998 he was convicted over amphetamine manufacturing but beat the charge on appeal. Mokbel was also a successful gambler who won big money on Melbourne racing. He had interests in shops, cafes, fashions, fragrances, restaurants, hotels, nightclubs and land in regional Victoria. At the turn of the century he was able to tell friends he controlled 38 different companies and he was worth $20 million.

Mokbel was one of the first of the major drug dealers to move into the designer pill industry, making amphetamine and speed for the nightclub set. As his business expanded he became involved with some of Melbourne’s shadier characters. The city has long had gangland murders. But the violence escalated in 2002 after ten of the city's most senior mobsters had met in a council of war in Carlton. Matters took a nasty turn at that meeting and Mokbel was almost beaten to death by bodyguards belonging to drug tsar Nick 'the Russian' Radev. Mokbel was taken to a private doctor by a hitman called Andrew “Benji” Veniamin, who was an associate of Carlton crime boss Mick Gatto. Afterwards Veniamin and Mokbel became friends and their mutual enemies began to die.

Radev was first to die, shot seven times outside his home. Lewis Moran's son Jason and his bodyguard were killed by a lone gunman as they watched a junior football clinic. They were followed in short order by two more associates of Moran who made speed. Then in December 2003 Moran’s friend and one of the city’s most influential gangsters, Graham 'the Munster' Kinniburgh, was shot dead outside his home in the leafy suburb of Kew. His death was the 24th gangland death in six years.

Responsibility for investigating these deaths rested with a Victorian police task force known as Purana. They were aware of Mokbel since 2001 when he was arrested over importing barrels of the chemical ephedrine. Although the charges couldn’t be proven, his assets were frozen by the National Australia Bank. Mokbel was charged for importing cocaine and defied his own lawyers’ advice to plead guilty. Mokbel hoped that delaying the trial, some of the drug squad detectives own charges of corruption would stick, thus discrediting their charges against him. Mokbel was released on bail after a year and tried to do a deal with police.

But by 2005 it was clear the deal wasn’t going to happen. Two of the cocaine traffickers were sentenced to 11 and five years respectively. Mokbel knew he was going down. He disappeared on 20 March shortly before the end of his trial, leaving his girlfriend and his frozen assets behind. But Mokbel couldn’t change old habits. He continued to run his drug empire from Greece. But his downfall came when one of his associates wired $400,000 to him in Athens by electronic transfer. Police picked up the trail. By early May officers from Purana knew where he lived. On Tuesday, Greek police caught up with him in a coffee shop. Mokbal had lost 20 kgs and was wearing a poor quality wig which matched the passport shots. But he was compliant with police when they arrested him. Perhaps he should have checked his horoscope that morning. It read "Leos tend to feel they're entitled to more freedom and independence … others might not agree today."