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Bonus - From The Desk - Melbourne Tobacco Wars · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Approache Production.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shann. This is a
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: new feature. I'm calling it from the Desk, my thoughts
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: on breaking crime news and trends, delivered each Friday. In
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: forty years as a journalist, I've covered the Melbourne gangland War,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: serial killers, police corruption and outlaw motorcycle gangs, and just
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: about every other kind of crime you can imagine. But
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I've never seen anything quite like this, the Tobacco Wars.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Fifth Melbourne hospitality venue attacked by arsonists this week.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Police cornered the teen suspects here on a residential street
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in Melbourne's East around five this morning.
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  Speaker 2: Week after week, Melbourne businesses are being set alife.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: It's understood the boys entered the closed business armed with
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: machetes and jerry cans, torching the venue before fleeing in
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and this and patrolled.
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  Speaker 2: Families are losing everything. Suburban residents are waking to flames,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: sirens and fear. The question is simple, why can't this
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: crime wave be stopped. There's been a big arrest this
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: week of the twenty year old lieutenant who seems to
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: be tasking the young arsonists, but will that be enough
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: to turn the tide? I'm not so sure.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Victoria police have arrested a twenty year old man suspected
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of directing the operations of an organized crime syndicate that's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: behind dozens of fire bombing attacks.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the scale of the problem. There's been
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: more than one hundred fire bombings linked to Victoria's illicit
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: tobacco wars. What Beganner's attacks on tobacconists has spread to restaurants, cafes, homes,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: and unrelated businesses. Many victims have no criminal connections whatsoever.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Their crime is to be selling cigarettes and not paying
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: tribute to the criminal syndic controlling the import of illegal cigarettes.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Much of this is linked back to the so called
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: commission run by Kazem Hahmed, who apparently is still operating
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: from a jail cell in Iraq. Ordinary families are increasingly
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: becoming collateral DAMA. It seems only a matter of time
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: before more innocent people are caught up in these blazers.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: We've already seen one innocent person who died in a
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: blaze because the arsonists got the wrong address. The confirmed
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: death was that of Katie Tangy twenty seven, an entirely
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: innocent woman killed in a mistaken address fire bombing. Shortly
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: after two am on January sixteen, twenty twenty five, two
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: people pulled up outside a three story townhouse in Dover Street,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Traganina in a dark vehicle that looked like a BMW
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: X three or X five. CCTV showed them leaving the vehicle,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: followed by a big explosion. One person was later seen
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: fleeing with what appeared to be a jerry can. Poor
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Katie was just house sitting for her brother who was
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: overseas on his honeymoon. She called Triple zero to say
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the house was a blaze and she was trapped inside,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: but she couldn't escape. Katie and the family's golden retriever, Sunny,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: died and the townhouse was destroyed.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: The girl did not deserve to lose her life, probably
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: her first first time really away, and by herself house
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: sitting for her brother who's on a honeymoon. She's been
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  Speaker 3: subjected to the most appalling, despicable act one could imagine.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: In the old Gangland War days, criminals generally targeted criminals.
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  Speaker 2: Today we're seeing mirgrant families, shop owners and neighboring businesses
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: paying the price. We really should be following the money
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: to understand this whole issue. Legal cigarettes in Australia, as
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: most people know, are heavily taxed. As of mid twenty
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: twenty six, the Australian federal tobacco excise was approximately one
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: dollar fifty two per cigarette stick for a standard smoke can,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: turning up to zero point eight grams of tobacco. That
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: means the excise alone on a packet of twenty cigarettes
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  Speaker 2: is about thirty bucks forty before GST and retailer margins
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: are added. A rough breakdown of a typical legal packet
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: twenty cigarettes costing around forty to fifty bucks looks like
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: this tobacco excise thirty dollars forty GST three dollars, sixty
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: to four dollars free manufacture, wholesale and retailer margins six
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: dollars to fifteen dollars. In other words, eighty percent or
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: more of the retail price of a llegal packet of
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  Speaker 2: smokes in Australia is tax. Criminal groups can sell illegal
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  Speaker 2: cigarettes at a fraction of the retail price while still
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: making enormous profits. The result is a market worth hundreds
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: of millions of dollars. Extortion becomes the business model. The
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: retailers have to pay protection money, buy stock from the Commission,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: or their shop burns for organized crime elicit Tobacco has
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: become what heroin was in the nineteen seventies and cocaine
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: was in the nineteen nineties. And we also hear the
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Commission is breaking out into cocaine as well. So they're
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: taking advantage of every single illicit possibility. So how has
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: crime changed? In this instance? Young firebombers are being recruited
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: through social media. That's what we've learned this week. With
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: this arrest of the twenty year old in Essendon, we
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: now know that he has about two thousand people ready
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: to work for. Maybe it's a bit of braggadoccio there,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: but the numbers are big and these fire bombings are
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: being outsourced for small sums of money. Encrypted apps are
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: replacing smoky backroom meetings and the bosses being overseas while
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: the teenagers carry out the risk locally. The modern organized
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: crime boss may never meet the person blood in the match,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: that's for sure. What's my perspective. This is another gangland war,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: but it's not confined to criminals versus criminals and Melbourne
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: feels different. The crime rate is actually falling this year
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: after a two year spike. But safety comes down to perceptions,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: and the media coverage is driving a sense of fear
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: and chaos in the public. The violence feels more random
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: and therefore more frightening. When I covered the car Williams years,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: yes there was fear, but there were also rules. He
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: used to tell me that extortionists were the lowest form
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: of criminals, living off the hard work of honest people,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: and that was one of the big issues he had
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: with some of the Cardon crew with whom he was
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  Speaker 2: at war. Today, those rules seem to have disappeared. So
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: where does this end? Clearly, the police cannot arrest their
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: way out of this. There's been more than one hundred
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: arrests and it's still happening. The kingpin, Kasamad is in
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: jail in Iraq and still this is going on. Is
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: this fundamentally an economic problem? Yes, it is. The federal
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: government must be willing to rethink the excise situation that's
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: created this market. Until government gives up its rapacious attitude
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: to excise the market conditions will favor the crooks. What
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: happens if the organized crime groups move into other heavily
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: tax commodities. We've already seen attacks on liquor outlets, suggesting
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: that bootleg alcohol may be the next revenue stream for
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  Speaker 2: the crooks. Victoria Police's Task Force Luna has made more
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  Speaker 2: than one hundred arrests, as I've said, but attacks continue
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  Speaker 2: across Melbourne and regional Victoria. It is time to change
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the strategy. For years, Melbourne sold itself as one of
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: the world's most livable cities, as I like to joke,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: although it's not a joke, it's now become one of
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: the most flammable. Today, some business owners will go to
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: bed wondering whether they'll wake up to a phone call
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: from police or firefighters. The Gangland War isn't back, it
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: never left. The prohibition on illicit drugs drove the business
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: model for methamphetamine and ecstasy. Meanwhile, the absurdly high excise
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: on legal tobacco is driving consumers to the illegal product.
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  Speaker 2: If there's no change, one hundred percent of tobacco will
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  Speaker 2: be supplied by the crooks within a very few years.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Ever since prohibition in America in the nineteen twenties, government intervention,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: taxation and outlawing of various substances has driven underworld business models.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: This is just another example of it. Dumb government policy
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: has simply forced a change to the business model. Maybe
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: a start towards resolving the situation is to stop supporting
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the budget with syntac on alcohol and tobacco. Maybe they
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: can make higher income earners pay their fair share of tax,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: or better still, close the loopholes that allow multinational companies
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: to pay virtually no tax in Australia. Something has to happen,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: and until then Melbourne will continue to burn. I've done
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: an interview with Detective Inspector Graham Bax from the Armed
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Crime Squad of Victoria Police. This will be released on Wednesday.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Check it out. This has been Adam Shann from the desk.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to you again next Friday. Meanwhile, look out
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: for the episodes of Real Crime on Monday and Wednesday.
• 8:38
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• 9:27
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