People speculate about how much we're getting. Who really knows? But the fact remains: drugs are still on the streets. If Dubai authorities respond to this data leak by expelling these criminals, what happens next?
Editorial Note: The following article is based on excerpts from a recent episode of 60 Minutes Australia. In his report, Nick McKenzie reveals a significant leak of Dubai property records, exposing not only residential addresses but also shedding light on how the city has emerged as a preferred destination for individuals with questionable backgrounds to conduct illicit activities.
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Welcome to Dubai. You’re in the international drug business. Dubai is a great place to do business from.
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| How Dubai became a haven for criminals from around the world [File Photo] |
The new crime capital of Australia. Public enemy number one sorts of criminals can operate with impunity and keep their businesses going. Why are our worst crooks and suspected crimes?
They are people with a lot of influence, a lot of money. They love this glitzy gangster’s paradise. The baddest of the bad.
That’s next on 60 Minutes. It might sound like a strange thing to say, but the crime capital of Australia is currently Dubai.
That’s because this glitzy megacity in the Persian Gulf has become home to nearly all of our biggest organised crime bosses. They think by moving offshore, they’re out of reach of federal authorities. But tonight, they might be thinking again.
An enormous leak of Dubai property records has revealed not only their home addresses but also how the city has become a prized destination for crooks and suspected criminals from all around the world. Dubai, it seems, has been the perfect place to do dirty business. The police in Dubai want the world to think they’re doing a great job.
So much so, a few years ago, they created this action-packed video showing their SWAT team on the tail of two of Australia’s biggest alleged drug lords. The targets were Benjamin Pitt and Matthew Batta, both living in Dubai at the time but wanted by our police. Watching this dramatic vision of their arrest, you’d think alleged crooks aren’t welcome in Dubai.
Professor Jodi Vittori is a corruption and illicit wealth expert. She says underworld figures aren’t just allowed into Dubai, they’re embraced. And the flow of their dirty money actually underpins the booming real estate market.
But, as you’re about to see, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Tonight, how Dubai became a safe haven for some of Australia’s most dangerous suspected criminals. These are people right at the top of the tree.
The baddest of the bad. We take you inside a global investigation exposing Dubai’s luxury real estate market as a dumping ground for the dirty money of the criminal elite.
Do you ask where they have their money from? Don’t ask. Because… It’s not our concern, Satya. Our concern is just what you want to know.
From villas on the water to apartments in the sky, the biggest ever leak of Dubai property data leads us straight to the luxurious compounds of Australian crime figures who’ve made the city their home away from home. Public enemy number one sorts of criminals are able to operate there with a high degree of impunity in a way that you don’t see anywhere else in the world. From the air, you can see why Palm Jumeirah is one of Dubai’s most exclusive addresses.
This is where you’ll find some of the city’s most extravagant properties. And halfway down the palm-lined Frond is the home linked to Angelo Pandeli, Australia’s most senior Hells Angel, our biggest Mr Big. At the moment, it’s the site of a major renovation.
But make no mistake, this sprawling beachfront villa purchased by his wife for more than $15 million is prime real estate. And in Dubai, Pandeli is living not as a crook but as a king. He would travel regularly, first or business class.
He’d eat at the best restaurants. I think he’d be living a very comfortable life. If anyone knows just how large Angelo Pandeli can live, it’s Tim O’Connor.
He’s now a criminal defence lawyer. But until recently, he spent years directing operations for the New South Wales Crime Commission, tracking Pandeli as he rose through the ranks to become Australia’s most powerful organised criminal. What sort of a man is Pandeli? He’s quite intelligent, very low profile, doesn’t like the limelight, but a person who has allegedly made a lot of money through drug trafficking.
What would you estimate his wealth to be? It would be, I would have thought, in the hundreds of millions. This one man, hundreds of millions? Yes. For the last few years, it’s believed Pandeli has been the head of the notorious Aussie cartel, a group of dangerous suspected crime bosses who’ve organised themselves into Australia’s most powerful drug trafficking network.
Each year, it earns an estimated $1.5 billion, allegedly smuggling ice and cocaine into Australia from one of its headquarters in Dubai. Angelo’s biggest asset by far is his connection with the Hells Angels. The Angels have representation virtually everywhere in the world.
They have supply routes, they have suppliers, they have ready-made networks. If you’re going to be bringing drugs into Australia, you need people who can receive it, store it and distribute it for you. A person like Mr Pandeli could do business, illicit business, virtually anywhere in the world.
But O’Connor isn’t surprised he chose the United Arab Emirates as a hub. If you’re in the international drug business, Dubai’s a great place to do business from. First off, its geographic location is great.
A hop, skip and a jump into Europe, not far to Southeast Asia, so it’s about midway. Secondly, if you want to be moving in the circles with international drug suppliers, it’s a place to go because a lot of the European people are already there. Thirdly, there is no tax in Dubai, so therefore a lot of the mechanisms that we would have here in Australia to track the illicit movement of funds, such as tax file numbers, AUSTRAC, don’t exist over there.
So put simply, Dubai is a great place for someone like Pandeli to move illicit funds from Australia safely, quickly, easily. Perfect. It’s not hard to see where some of the ill-gotten gains of the Australian crooks end up.
Just 15 minutes from Angelo Pandeli’s mansion is the equally impressive Sunrise Bay Tower No. 1. It could be known as the Melrose Place of Australian drug trafficking suspects, because between them, a number of unit owners here were allegedly responsible for more illicit drugs entering Australia than at any other period in recent history. The leaked property data shows a number of crooks clustered in the very same apartment building.
What does that tell us? It’s a nice apartment block. Sounds like a gangster’s paradise. Basically, yes.
Apartments on levels 9, 12 and 21 were previously linked to Mark Buddle, the international commander of the Comanchero outlaw bike gang, accused drug smuggler Benjamin Pitt, brought on level 20. The wife of his co-accused, Matthew Bittar, purchased apartments on levels 15 and 23. And the deeds to an apartment on level 14 belonged to Marco Coffin, another suspected member of the Aussie cartel.
A short drive from Sunrise Bay Tower is the villa purchased by Coffin’s associate, Mohamed Boussole, also considered a top Australian target by the federal police. They are people with a lot of influence, a lot of money, and would be considered at the top of the tree. The baddest of the bad.
But in Dubai, the baddest of the bad are in good company. It would seem dozens of the world’s worst villains have bought property in this Middle Eastern metropolis.
The names appear in an extensive database of property records obtained by a global coalition of investigative journalists led by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. It features thousands of entries and pinpoints the properties belonging to some of the world’s most unscrupulous people, a roll call of the crooked, criminal and corrupt. How significant is this major leak of property data exposing all these gangsters, criminals, the corrupt living in Dubai? It really highlights the role that the UAE plays as this sort of pirate entrepot of the world, a place where any sort of businessman, good, bad, corrupt, full-on criminal, where they can operate with impunity and keep their businesses going.
Professor Jodi Vittori is a corruption and illicit wealth expert. She says underworld figures aren’t just allowed into Dubai, they’re embraced. And the flow of their dirty money actually underpins the booming real estate market.
One of the questions is how much the economy relies on this? And it may be that the criminal activity props up a lot of what keeps the UAE the bright, shiny city that the UAE is. Why is real estate, these luxurious villas, these seaside apartments, such a good place to move or launder dirty, drug-tainted funds? If you’re going to engage in a great deal of money laundering for criminal activity or otherwise, you’re going to need a robust real estate market. It really comes in handy for being able to launder millions and sometimes even billions of dollars in cash.
You just can’t do that in other situations. Maybe you can do that with artwork, maybe to an extent with gold, but there’s not very many other ways to do it. And unlike with artwork or gold, you can’t live in the place at the same time that you’re laundering the funds through it.
And as you’re about to see, when it comes to purchasing property in Dubai, real estate agents don’t care who’s buying or how they’re paying. Do you ask where they have their money from? Don’t ask. It’s not our concern, such as.
Our concern is just what you want to buy. With its skyline punctuated by glistening skyscrapers and man-made beaches lined with mega mansions, Dubai has long had one of the world’s hottest real estate markets. A desert dream for property developers, the last 50 years has seen an explosion in high-end, high-luxury living.
And according to a mega property data leak, an influx of the world’s worst villains, including a raft of some of Australia’s suspected drug-trafficking kingpins. Public enemy number one sorts of criminals are able to operate there with a high degree of impunity in a way that you don’t see anywhere else in the world. Georgetown University professor Jodi Vittori studies corruption and illicit finance.
She says Dubai has become known as a playground for the organised crime elite. So under the right conditions, you can live very freely, presumably with the knowledge of those in charge of the country. And be able to operate your banking, your money laundering, park your yacht there, park your aircraft there, buy a palatial mansion, put your kids in school, all of those sorts of activities that you couldn’t get away with anywhere else in the world.
It’s also been a place that has allowed individuals who are criminals to be able to openly buy real estate there in a way that would be much harder to do anywhere else. You only have to spend an afternoon with one of Dubai’s real estate agents to learn that here, anything goes. What’s mind-blowing is how brazen it all is.
What you’re watching is covert footage captured in Dubai by a Swedish television reporter. The man being filmed is one of the city’s top real estate agents in charge of selling some of Dubai’s best properties. And as you’re about to see, he doesn’t care who’s buying or how they’re paying.
Only cash? How do they bring them here? In bags? So it’s a good place if you’re corrupted? They’re the frank confessions of a man used to the requests of the very rich. Even he acknowledges it’s the city’s relaxed regulations around real estate that draws so many people in and enables them to keep huge amounts of money safe. Yeah, but maybe some do buy drugs in other countries and take the money and… They have to follow everyone what they are doing from where they… Do you ask where they have their money from? Don’t ask.
Because… It’s not our concern, actually. Our concern is just what you want to buy. In response to this global investigation, an official from the United Arab Emirates insists it takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously.
The statement also said the UAE works closely with international partners to disrupt and deter all forms of illicit finance. And while it’s true there has been some cooperation with Australian authorities with the arrest and extradition of Benjamin Pitt and Matthew Bataar, many other suspects remain. The UAE insists it is cleaning up its act.
Things are getting better. Can we believe that? It’s hard to believe. They say they’re cleaning up, but all of these individuals have been able to live very, very openly in the UAE.
And so it belies belief that they are really significantly cleaning up their act, at least when it comes to certain key criminal actors in the world. Certainly, some of Australia’s most senior suspected criminals maintain interests in Dubai. Angelo Pandeli and Mohamed Boussolet are not only linked to luxury property, they’re also suspected by Australian authorities of continuing to import drugs.
John, the fact that Angelo Pandeli can purchase a $10 million US villa in Dubai without seemingly so much of a blink from the Dubai authorities, what does that tell us? There’s a lot of speculation about how he’s done it and what might have been done to stop him doing it. There’s perhaps an argument to say the Dubai authorities could have done more, but there’s almost certainly an argument to say Australian authorities could have done more. John Cheves is an ex-Australian federal police anti-money laundering specialist.
Drug trafficking and organised crime are occurring on an unprecedented scale, but it’s not a political priority. Police are having some big wins, but they’re barely denting the drug and dirty money flows that fuel so many corruption, economic and health problems.
He says that what’s happening in Dubai is a symptom of a system failure here in Australia. For money to have been generated in Australia from crime to then be moved out of Australia, across our borders into another country, is a process of multiple steps. And there are possible points where law enforcement in various parts of the world could have done more to stop that happening.
So what you’re saying is this revelation that all these Australian gangsters are amassing significant wealth in the UAE is actually a failure, potentially, of Australian authorities to stop that flow of money from Australia, drug money, abroad. It is, yeah. There arguably have been occasions where Australian authorities could have done more to stop that money leaving.
The Dubai property leak highlights a grim truth known to almost every senior law enforcement official in the nation. Drug trafficking and organised crime are occurring on an unprecedented scale, but it’s not a political priority. Police are having some big wins, but they’re barely denting the drug and dirty money flows that fuel so many corruption, economic and health problems.
Former New South Wales Crime Commission Director Tim O’Connor says the crooks, or at least a good bunch of them, are winning. Organised crime networks have almost perfected the way to bring drugs into Australia. We’re a big country, we have a lot of trade.
People bandy around figures as to how much we’re getting. Who really knows? But the fact is that there’s still drugs available on the street. If the Dubai authorities do react to this large data leak by booting out some of these crooks, cracking down on them, what’s going to happen to the problem? Look, ultimately, they just might move to another jurisdiction where they can do the same thing.
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