Top cop ‘a mafia mole for decades’
Traitor to be exposed
ONE of Australia’s top law enforcers is under investigation, with suspicions he is a mafia informant and over decades may have compromised some of Australia’s most notorious organised crime cases.
News Corp Australia has confirmed the officer has resigned after being advised of the highlevel probe into his activities. No charges have been laid.
The allegations have now been handed to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, a government statutory body tasked with weeding out corruption within the Department of Home Affairs and agencies including the AFP, Australian Border Force and other law enforcement bodies.
ACLEI is looking at dozens of potential criminal cases that may have failed during his tenure as a senior officer working with multiple law enforcement bodies across Australia and whether he had a hand in their collapse.
There are strong fears too other senior figures within law enforcement, the judiciary and politics might also have been influenced by the man and his associates. There is a list of names.
News Corp has unsuccessfully attempted to contact him.
ACLEI has confirmed there is an investigation under way into alleged systemic corruption. “ACLEI is conducting an investigation into an alleged corruption issue that relates to a former law enforcement staff member’s association with organised crime while they were a member of a law enforcement agency,” a spokesperson said.
“As a matter of course, once the Integrity Commissioner has provided a report on a completed investigation to the Attorney-General and head of agency, she will decide whether it is in the public interest to publish a report on the ACLEI website.”
It is understood the former officer’s career spans as far back as being involved in elements of the police investigation into the 1989 assassination of AFP assistant commissioner Colin Winchester. He may have had a role in the carriage of the case that seven years later would see a public servant David Eastman wrongfully convicted and spend 19 years in jail until a retrial found a miscarriage of justice and questioned the validity of the AFP’s probe. As detailed in an exclusive report yesterday, elements of Italian organised crime were overlooked or not fully pursued by the AFP which instead built a case just around Eastman. News Corp Australia has learned the former officer’s identity came to light only as recently as 2019 when another law enforcement agency, believed to be ASIO, uncovered apparent close associations to known Italian organised crime figures. He would openly meet them in bars and restaurants, unaware he was being watched. Specifically, those figures belonged to the ’Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful crime groups in the world. The AFP was told about the issue and launched a probe into numerous criminal cases, including murders and drug plots involving some of the biggest names in organised crime whose briefs may have crossed the man’s desk.