Melbourne mob war takes no prisoners

A suspected mob hitman was gunned down in a Melbourne restaurant this week. He is the latest in a long line of victims, writes GREG ANSLEY

Today, as Michael Choucair opens La Porcella Pizza & Pasta Restaurant to an uncertain future in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, police investigating the city's underworld war will turn their attention to claims of corruption within.

La Porcella was the lunchtime haunt of Dominic "Mick" Gatto, a man known to Choucair as a "gentleman-and-a-half", but to police gangbusters as one of the city's leading mobsters.

On Tuesday Gatto shot and killed Andrew "Benji" Veniamin in the rear of the crowded restaurant, bringing to 22 the number slain by warring crime clans since self-styled godfather Alphonse Gangitano was murdered in January 1998.

Gangitano was being investigated by Taskforce Purana, the special unit established to probe the killings but, according to sources quoted by Melbourne's Herald Sun, had maintained the underworld's code of silence.

But new revelations suggest Purana itself may have been compromised by two officers now suspended from duty and under investigation for allegations they sold information gained from phone taps to an underworld fringe-dweller.

One of the officers is a shift supervisor with the Victorian police special projects unit, responsible for telecommunications intercepts, and the other is a liaison officer with the Australian Federal Police.

Purana phone taps were switched to another unit before the officers were suspended, but there are fears significant damage may already have been done.

The Victorian Ombudsman's office is already investigating possible links between former drug squad officers and the underworld slayings, a possibility conceded to the Age by Acting Police Ombudsman Bob Seamer.

Assistant Commissioner of Crime Simon Overland yesterday denied the Purana investigation had been compromised by corruption, but he declined to comment further.

"Not until we get to, or when and if we get to, a stage when charges are preferred and that detail can be released through the official judicial process," he told ABC radio.

But so far charges have been laid in connection with only two of those murders, despite wide reporting of the identities of those believed to be responsible for them.

Gangitano was shot, probably by fellow thugs Jason Moran and Graham Kinniburgh, in his laundry.

Since then, Melbourne's mobsters have been hit in their front yards, their bedrooms, in their cars and, as of this week, in a crowded restaurant. There can be no doubt that Melbourne is in the middle of an underworld war every bit as savage as the Painters and Dockers battles over drugs in the 1960s and 1970s.

Thirty years on and not much has changed, except that the major players don't even make a pretence of working - on the docks or anywhere else.

The latest victim, accused hit-man Veniamin, who drove a $200,000 Mercedes Benz despite having been between jobs for at least a dozen years, knew he had it coming. And so did police.

So perceptive was Veniamin that he told detectives last year not to investigate his death when he was murdered.

The heavily-tattooed Veniamin was slain in the middle of the afternoon in the La Porcella restaurant as he paid a visit to Gatto, who had just put away a hearty meal of pasta.

Veniamin's close friend, accused drug lord Carl Williams, is now on the top of the hit list, according to Overland.

"We have fears for Mr Williams' safety," he said. "We hope there aren't any more murders, but what we are hoping for is an outbreak of common sense from the underworld."

He said Operation Purana detectives had met a wall of silence from most key underworld players, including Veniamin and Williams, during their investigations into the killings, starting with Gangitano's.

A coroner found that Jason Moran and Graham "The Munster" Kinniburgh were at Gangitano's house on the night he died and were implicated in his death. Both were later gunned down.

Nicolai "Nick the Russian" Radev, who had convictions for assault, burglary, attempted arson and drug offences, was shot twice in Coburg in April, last year.

Radev's death may have been a payback for the killing of "drug thug" Dino Dibra three years ago, police sources said.

Dibra was a suspect in the shooting death of Radev's associate and drug dealer Mark Moran, brother of Jason.

The war reached a peak with the very public killings of Jason Moran and his associate, Pasquale Barbaro.

They were shot dead by a lone gunman as they sat in a van in a North Essendon carpark with Moran's children.

A month to the day after the Moran-Barbaro hit, small-time criminal "Willy" Thompson was shot several times with two guns in suburban Chadstone.

Police said Thompson, 39, had a drug-related past and knew both Jason Moran and Nick the Russian.

On August 18, the charred corpse of Mark Mallia, 30, of Reservoir, was found in a drain in Sunshine.

He was an associate of Radev and was being investigated by Purana detectives.

Reputed hitman Housam Zayat, 32, who had more than 100 criminal convictions including attempted murder, was blasted several times near his car at Tarneit in September. He, too, was an associate of Radev's.

Michael Marshall, a drug dealer and hotdog salesman, was slain in broad daylight in front of his 5-year-old son and girlfriend in South Yarra on October 25.

Two men, Victor Brincat, 43, and Thomas Hentschel, 41, were arrested within hours of the shooting and have been charged with his murder.

It is believed Veniamin was responsible for killing crime boss Kinniburgh, who was ambushed and executed outside his fortress-style home in Kew last December.

The 62-year-old, who has convictions for dishonesty, bribery and firearms offences, had been known to police for 30 years.

Veniamin is also believed to be the man who pulled the trigger on Mallia and Dibra.

As Veniamin is a figure in several ongoing investigations, Overland said his death would only complicate the Purana operation.

Kinniburgh was a close friend of Gatto, 48, who on Wednesday appeared in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court charged with Veniamin's murder.

Gatto was a pallbearer at Kinniburgh's funeral.

Williams will most likely be a pallbearer at the funeral of his close friend Veniamin.

The Herald Sun yesterday reported that until Kinniburgh was shot, Veniamin, Williams and Gatto had been friends, with Gatto racing with heavyweight friends to back Veniamin during a dispute with security staff at a nightclub 18 months ago.

Their friendship was splintered by Kinniburgh's death, and ended finally in a bitter row in January.

Williams told the Herald Sun that someone must have "poisoned [Gatto's] brain" to make him believe Veniamin had killed Kinniburgh.

Williams also said he believed Veniamin must have been set up, because he had no problem with Gatto and if he had intended to kill him, as has been suggested, would never have gone out to the back of the restaurant.

"He would have done it at the front."

Little of this matters to restaurateur Choucair, who now worries for the future of his business, despite an apology from Gatto for the notoriety Veniamin's killing has brought down upon it.

"For Mick to say sorry, it must be out of his control," Choucair told the Age. "He is a very wise man and very calm. He would never do anything to sabotage my business."

Choucair admitted to being emotionally drained and on edge, not knowing what was to become of the restaurant - "90 per cent of my customers are families" - and concerned for the revelation that his clientele included some of Melbourne's most notorious thugs.

"In this industry you cannot be selective, you can't choose who comes in," he said. "This is a public place. It's open to everybody."