Nikolai Radev
Radev
was a notorious career criminal and has been described as a difficult man with
lots of enemies.
He was also known for never leaving his home
without a gun.
Radev arrived in Australia in 1980 without any
assets and was granted refugee status.
The following year he married Sylvia, a
hairdressing apprentice.
He worked in his in-laws' Doveton fish-and-chip
shop and then opened a pizza shop in Dandenong.
But after about 12 months he decided there were
better ways to make a living.
From 1983 until his death in 2003, Radev did not
work or pay tax and yet maintained the lifestyle of a millionaire.
Shortly after arriving in Australia, Radev
contacted members of Melbourne's Russian organised crime syndicates.
He was already known as a ruthless criminal from
his early years in Bulgaria - although Australian authorities were not aware of
his record before granting him refugee status.
In 1985, he was jailed in Victoria for drug
trafficking.
After spending time behind bars in Bulgaria,
Melbourne's jails were like weekend retreats.
Radev's convictions in Melbourne include assault,
blackmail, threats to kill, extortion, firearm offences, armed robbery, and drug
charges
He was a problem for police and a threat to other
criminals because of his brutality and stand-over tactics.
Police said Radev was considered a dangerous and
violent criminal.
"He was into everything when it came to
crime. A lot of police have said they've never worked on anyone as proficient as
him,"
a detective said.
Former underworld figure Mark
Brandon Read said Radev was known to have run up large debts.
"His
attitude to personal accounting has always been cavalier," Mr Read
said.
Radev was described by associates as a popular
man who liked to keep fit.
"Despite his colourful background, I always
found him a very pleasant man to deal with," a former lawyer said.
In 1987, he was sentenced to five years' jail
for his role in a plan to blow up a convenience store.
A police report says this of him: ''He is a
dangerous and violent offender, well connected within the criminal underworld.
He carries firearms and associates with people who carry firearms.
''His conviction history shows a propensity
toward violence to collect money.''
By the late 1990s, Radev was trafficking
heroin.
Most of his dealing was done in the St Kilda
district.
An incident in 1998 in Mount
Ararat in central Victoria led to Radev being sent to jail.
Radev had been sharing the driving
with a mate called Kostadin Pavlov, returning on a trip from Adelaide at 3a.m,
when cops ran an intercept on the Western Highway.
Stashed in the boot was twenty-five
kilos of dope, three hand guns and two shotguns.
Charges amounted to a two month
sentence.
Radev was released two weeks before
the killings of police officers Gary
Silk and Rodney Miller in Moorabbin on August 15, 1998.
Suspicion later fell on Radev
over the police murders.
In fact, one hour before the
shootings in Moorabbin, Radev and an associate, Loui
El-Sheikh, were sitting in
a McDonald's in East Bentleigh, waiting to complete a drug deal.
The pair arrived together in Radev's
Alfa Romeo and camped at a window table waiting for a third player, Azzam
Ahmed,
to arrive with their merchandise.
Instead, Sgt Silk entered with a
folder.
Radev knew straight away that Silk
was a cop, despite the unmarked car, the plain clothes.
He stayed calm as he watched Silk
talk to the girl behind the counter and the girl just nod.
He heard the phrase "Don't be
alarmed" and wondered what the hell was going on.
In fact Silk and Miller were
watching the Korean BBQ across the road, using the McDonald's carpark as their
vantage point.
Silk had noted the presence of Radev
but let the coincidence slide.
During that period Radev had been
the subject of police scrutiny during that time but not in terms of the
restaurant raids Silk was investigating.
Operation Beirut related to an
amphetamine racket in general and Radev in particular.
When Azzam Ahmed finally arrived,
Radev pumped him on being surveilled.
"See those Jacks in the carpark
- the green Commodore - they follow you?"
Ahmed said no.
"You sure about that?"
said El Sheikh.
Ahmed
said, "They got here
before me, din they?!"
"Who's in the car with
you?"
"A mate," said Ahmed.
Radev glanced through the window.
The cops were focussed on some Asian
place across the intersection.
The crims felt off the hook, for
now.
Money and product changed hands and
the men left the scene near midnight.
Ahmed
had called El-Sheikh the morning after
Silk and Miller were killed, telling him the cops were the same cops at
McDonald's.
"You and Nick do 'em?" he asked.
"No," said Loui.
Of the dozen weapons Nik Radev owned, his pet
gun, said informants, was a Bulldog .38 which ballistics considered as being
within the spectrum of Silk and Miller's murder weapon.
Radev and Housam
Zayat, along with Zayat's brother Mohammed,
were charged over a violent aggravated burglary in November 1998.
The burglary came in the form of a home invasion
and involved a 71-year-old
man being bashed and his five-year-old granddaughter being tied to a bed and
threatened with a handgun.
The three men had donned balaclavas and burst
into the family home in Northcote.
The man police suspect was Radev put a .38
calibre pistol into the five year-old's mouth, threatening to kill her if money
wasn't produced.
The family dug up $29,000 in cash.
Radev
was arrested on December 12, 1998.
He was grabbed by the Special
Operations Group outside the Palace in St Kilda, along with fellow speed
merchant Phillip Sweeney.
A search of Radev's home in East
Brighton uncovered two pistols, one with a silencer, yet neither was a Bulldog
.38.
Special Response quizzed Radev on a
violent ag-burg in Northcote, but he sat like a clam through the interview.
Only when detective Sol Solomon
chimed in, asking about his movements on August 15, did Radev have something to
say.
He wanted to make a deal.
Radev promised solid information on
the Silk-Miller murders in return for all charges on the Northcote job to be
dropped.
Not that he was admitting anything -
Radev was too cagey for that - just a quid pro quo.
When nothing looked on offer, Radev
went back to his clam impression.
Before too long the suspect was sent
back to his second home, Port Phillip Prison, on remand for the burglary.
One week into the new year,
Radev's name crossed the desk again, this time through a gig attached to St
Kilda CIB.
The middle man was Detective
Sergeant Dave Waters.
He was under investigation by the
Ethical Standards Division at the time over his links and interests within St
Kilda's bars and brothels and was later charged, along with three other St Kilda
officers, over alleged drug trafficking.
Waters, a former close friend of
Silk, had been accused by insiders of relying on compassionate leave since the
police murders to forestall any questioning by the Ethical lads.
Before taking crook, though, Waters
produced, on January 6, a drug offender called Ilias Bafas.
The man knew Radev and El-Sheikh
intimately from underground networks.
Bafas said he was holding guns for
Radev, until Radev was nabbed and Bafas got jumpy.
He said Nik and El-Sheikh had done
the two cops in Moorabbin for sure.
He rattled off correct calibres to
detectives.
His timelines and locations added up
too, pointing the finger squarely at Radev and El-Sheikh for the double murder.
Most of the taskforce were
growing keen on the pair, but others maintained their cynicism.
Maybe Bafas was being spoon-fed the
relevant facts by an unknown party, they argued.
Maybe Bafas was a puppet, and this
so-called breakthrough was a ploy to avert attention from the puppeteer's own
illegal activities.
Detective Senior Constable Tim
Argall interviewed Bafas and asked him where he put the guns.
"I gave em to Mick," said
Bafas.
"Mick who?" asked Argall.
"Mick Tadic," replied
Bafas. "Don't tell him I told you but."
Tadic
was well known to police and had been arrested with the notorious Peter
Gibb (who was also arrested over the Silk Miller murders) on charges relating to the theft of $63,900 from an
Armaguard van in Sunshine in February 1991.
On January
21, 1999, at 6am, a search warrant was handed to Milan "Mick" Tadic.
Police found
the makings of a speed factory in his garage.
He later spoke
openly about the Silk-Miller case.
He said Radev
wasn't the man they were after.
If Nick'd seen
the cops that night in Bentleigh, said Tadic, then he'd never go near them a
second time.
And what about
that intercept in Ararat? Radev went quietly enough didn't he?
Nick was no cop
shooter. "Besides, he kinda likes jail. Nick's got a fair bit of clout in
Port Phillip. Why would he try to resist arrest for Chrissakes?"
Tadic said
the real bloke to look at was El-Sheikh.
Usually souped
to the eyeballs, said Tadic, and he carried the right sort of handguns.
Silly prick had
gone back to Cochranes Road, so went the story, aiming to pick up a drug stash
hidden in a laneway, and the rest made front-page news.
Since their
McDonald's tryst, Radev and El-Sheikh had experienced a falling out.
The flow of
second-hand cars that El-Sheikh gave to Radev and his burglary pals slowly dried
up.
Each crim was
out to frame eachother, adding spin to every information report.
If anywhere,
Tadic was on Radev's side, but Bafas had moved closer to El-Sheikh.
If that wasn't
enough, the water was muddied further by Detective Sergeant Water's ailing
reputation.
Before the
search party was done, Tadic was led to a concrete factory in Williamstown, a
place that surveillance officers had seen him visit more than once.
A second drug
lab was found inside.
Peter
'Socks' Nicola, of Hopper's Crossing, was the final member of the 'Lawn Mower
Gang'.
He was known to
team up with Radev in the past but was lately trying to live the straight life.
But his alibi
checked out so police re-focussed their investigations to El-Sheikh, Tadic and
Radev.
Radev was
convinced El-Sheikh was the assassin.
He spoke to
Bafas in Port Phillip's visitor's room, deliberately being vague with details in
case Bafas sold the story for his own ends.
Radev promised
hard facts if bail could be swung on the burglary conviction.
He told Bafas
he knew where the killer's pistol was hidden.
A .38 calibre.
But any more
info would come at a price.
In the meantime
El-Shiekh was henpecking the taskforce, swearing Radev was the mystery man of
Cochranes Rd, knowing full well that if Radev ever beat his sentence, he'd have
El-Sheikh on top of the hit-list.
Some weeks
later, two guns showed up.
The first
belonged to Bafas, who was caught smuggling speed into Port Phillip for Radev.
Prison
authorities searched the visitor's car, finding a loaded hand gun under the
driver's seat.
It wasn't the
Moorabbin weapon, but it fast-tracked Bafas into jail.
Months on,
Detective Sergeant Waters produced the second gun out of the blue.
The gun was
examined by ballistics and later dismissed as the possible murder weapon.
In conclusion
only two facts were rock-solid.
One: Nik Radev
and Loui El-Sheikh met at McDonald's, East Bentleigh, between 9 and 10.30p.m.
Two: on the
same night, Sergeant Silk dropped by.
Investigators
believe both Radev and El-Sheikh were armed with revolvers on the night, intent
to protect their negotiations, but these guns were either not used or not found.
Silk and
Miller, still posted in their Commodore watching the Korean BBQ, would have seen
the heads leave the carpark sometime around 10.30p.m. but took no active interest
beyond that point.
No radio call
or evidence of pursuit was made.
They might have
made a mental note, but nothing more concrete than that as Radev and co lay
outside their evening's brief.
What the
dealers did in the interval between their exit in East Bentleigh and the time of
the murders in Moorabbin remains a mystery of hypothesis.
In separate
statements, El-Sheikh and Radev claimed to have driven to the lawn mower shop to
cut up more drugs, and from their they drove to a hotel on Dandenong Road,
Oakleigh, about five kilometres from the crime scene, where they drank until
3am.
But this didn't
was with one of Radev's customers.
One of Radev's
speed clients, Danielle Lednar, claimed to have made a rendezvous with him at a
Warrigal Rd service station around midnight.
(Mobile phone checks indicated the
pair had contact after 12.15 a.m on 16 August.)
Lednar said she was heading for the
meeting place only to be diverted by roadblocks at Keys Rd junction.
She recalled a million cops running
everywhere, sirens on, lights flashing, ambulances arriving.
Lednar had to go the long way round
to score the drugs.
She pulled into the petrol station
where Radev was waiting and they made the deal in less than a minute.
This implied that, if Radev was the
killer, he'd hung around Warrigal Rd to sell a handful of speed tabs five
minutes after executing two policemen. It didn't seem to stand up.
The lawn mower gang then disbanded.
El-Sheikh moved to Queensland. Bafas
was jailed for three months for running speed. Tadic served time for fraud and
drug related offences. Nicola, it is believed, went straight.
On October 15, 2000, Dino
Dibra, a western suburbs drug dealer was shot dead out the front of his
Sunshine home.
He was a close associate of
underworld figures Paul Kallipolitis and Andrew
Veniamin, who would both be shot dead within three years.
Radev was one of the prime suspects.
His girlfriend Katriana Smyth later
claimed she heard Radev and another man planning Dibra's murder.
Shortly after making her claims,
Smyth was murdered.
Radev had a reputation as a stand-over man who
preyed on white-collar criminals.
He and Housam
Zayat, who was shot dead in September 2003, dangled a "fraudster"
from a seventh storey hotel balcony and bashed him until he put a large sum of
cash in
Radev's bank account.
Sedat
Ceylan,
an underworld figure police had
feared would be the next victim in Melbourne's gangland war, fled
Australia in 2001 soon after Radev and Zayat,
tortured him for six hours in room 719 of the Stamford Plaza Hotel, in Little
Collins St.
He told police Radev and Zayat,
with whom he had been friends, threatened to kill him and his family if he
didn't give them $120,000.
Radev and Zayat dangled Ceylan
by the ankles from the seventh-floor of the hotel's interior balcony.
"They got me over the
balcony and I looked straight down,'' Ceylan later said.
"I thought I was going to
die. I didn't yell for help because I was scared. I didn't want to upset them
and make them drop me out of anger.
"Nik and Sam were laughing.
They were joking with each other.
"I couldn't see what was
funny . . . if they let go I would've fallen seven floors to my death.
"I weigh 50kg in total. I
am sure this saved me from death.
"If Nik and Sam had held
someone heavier over the rail, they wouldn't have been able to hold them.''
Ceylan said Radev and Zayat
released him after he agreed to pay up.
But he didn't pay.
Ceylan, 37, was
facing charges related to an alleged scam that resulted in the Australian
Taxation Office paying him $2.3 million in GST refunds he allegedly was not
entitled to.
Separate Victoria Police charges
involved an alleged attempt by Ceylan to steal 7kg of gold bullion and more than
$1 million in cash using allegedly stolen cheques.
The
fraudster fled to Turkey with his money.
He later contacted Victoria
Police and revealed he was hiding in Turkey.
Australia doesn't have an
extradition treaty with Turkey, but after several discussions with Victoria
Police Ceylan volunteered to return to face his fraud and tax charges.
In January 2007, Victoria Police
arrested Sedat Seylan at Melbourne Airport after the wanted man tipped them off
that he was flying in from Turkey and gave himself up.
Known by police and criminals as Radev's
right-hand man, Zayat revelled in his work as a standover thug, drug dealer and
-- if police suspicions are correct -- an underworld hit man.
He was considered an enforcer for Radev.
According to a police source Zayat
and Radev kept guns and
explosives on their property when they shared a house in Melbourne's northern
suburbs.
"He always had guns. He would have always
been tooled up, especially in the current (underworld) climatic
conditions," the source said.
Police considered Zayat
to be Radev's dirty jobs
man.
His criminal connections were also said to extend
into the Melbourne wing of the Russian mafia, more than likely through Radev.
A former detective said Zayat
and Radev ran a
profitable extortion racket over drug dealers.
"Zayat would go out and find the
traffickers," the former detective said.
"He would then introduce them to Nik, who
would threaten them for their profits."
Radev was an associate of the notorious Helmut
Kirsch, aka Gregory Middap.
Kirsch was convicted in 1991 of being an accessory
after the fact to the murders of drug dealers Ricky Parr and Lina Galea.
He has
also been accused of being a terrorist sympathiser.
A jury later heard that former law clerk, Ali
Aydin, threatened to sue police officer and reality TV star Detective Senior
Constable Benjamin Archbold in July 2001 in a bid
to influence the criminal case against Sam Zayat.
The County Court was told that Helmut
Kirsch, and Aydin, had threatened Archbold
to frighten him so he would "go soft with their client".
The jury heard that Aydin
"directly threatened" Mr Archbold with
civil and criminal charges, and had also threatened to leak his address to Nik
Radev, who was described as "an armed loose cannon".
The threats included reporting Mr Archbold
to police on corruption claims and fabricating evidence.
The court heard that after the threats were
initially made, Mr Archbold was fitted with a
recording device to tape further conversations with Aydin
and Kirsch, who had allegedly told Mr Archbold that Radev was
"violent" and "a lunatic".
Radev was a suspect in the May 2002 murder of Victor
Peirce, and a close friend of
Peirce's brother, heroin dealer Peter
Allen.
Police later revealed that they believed that
Andrew Veniamin was responsible for the Peirce murder.
Radev was linked to the July
2002 shooting of a former Soviet police officer who turned informer.
The informer, who cannot be named, is now
referred to in police documents as K.
He became a criminal after
migrating to Melbourne.
The Melbourne Magistrates' Court later heard that
K helped Radev associate Michael Goldman and
others commit burglaries and thefts at building sites in 2001 and 2002.
But K feared for his family when the gang began
to arm themselves and their crimes worsened.
Days before he was shot, K was arrested in connection with a spate of 130
burglaries -- including at least one aggravated burglary -- and asked police to jail him to end his life of crime.
''Under no circumstance was I ready or prepared
to become a murderer,'' he said.
The
Herald Sun later reported that the gang had planned to rob a circus operating on the Mornington
Peninsula.
The big-top circus was seen as a soft but lucrative
target by Radev
but K was arrested before the circus
robbery took place.
He decided to talk to police about the estimated
$1.7 million burglary spree, implicating three co-offenders in the process.
It is believed he decided to talk because Radev
and another gang member were prepared to open fire on police if need be during
the circus robbery.
Apart from Goldman, the other men K implicated in
the burglaries and at least one vicious assault were gang members Dima Mendelis
and Sviatoslav Moroz.
"That organised group committed burglaries
and, on some occasions, other offences of dishonesty which were generally
carefully planned and always carried out in a skilled and efficient
manner," Judge Carolyn Douglas said later.
Dima Mendelis was born in August 1980 in the
Ukraine and came to Australia with his father and stepmother in 1996.
Speaking little English, Mendelis went to Prahran
Secondary College and lived with his paternal grandparents in St Kilda.
He worked as a chicken boner, car detailer and
painter and spent regular periods in prison.
His convictions include intentionally causing
serious injury, making a threat to kill, breaching a corrections order, multiple
counts of burglary, aggravated burglary and single charges of possessing a
weapon and using heroin.
"You commenced smoking opium as a young
teenager in the Ukraine," a Judge Douglas said.
"You took up using heroin in Australia when you were at Port Phillip
Prison."
Sviatoslav Moroz was born in Moscow in 1974 and raised by
his mother.
His stepbrother is a professional violinist.
He came to Australia in 1991 to avoid being
conscripted into the army.
Moroz lived in Canberra before moving to
Melbourne, where he has worked as an apprentice chef, car detailer and a
full-time restaurant chef.
After injuring his back in a car accident he took
to using amphetamines in order to battle depression.
In this time he racked up convictions for
dishonesty.
It was Moroz who introduced K to Goldman.
According to court documents: "Not long
afterwards, they all met at a cafe and commenced to discuss the prospect of
engaging in joint criminal activities."
Moroz later received a seven-year maximum sentence
for several
burglaries.
K offered to give police information about the
gang members, including Radev.
''I mentioned him (to police) in connection with
the fact that he was a close friend of Michael Goldman.''
He said he met Radev through Mr Goldman.
On July 10, 2002, K met tactical response
group detectives to arrange to inform on Radev, Goldman and others, offered
to wear a listening device.
He was wired up later that day when he went to Mr
Goldman's house in Highett Road, Hampton.
But after hugging Mr Goldman and stepping inside,
he was shot.
Michael Goldman, a Ukrainian-born
criminal, was considered the godfather of the
Russian organised crime group, according to police documents.
The son of a Jewish Soviet military captain,
Goldman was born in Kiev in 1948 and grew up in the anti-Semitic Soviet Union.
He migrated to Australia, settling in Melbourne
in 1980.
After injuring himself at work, Goldman received
sickness benefits while running the crime gang.
During his time in Melbourne, Goldman has been
convicted of intentionally causing serious injury after stabbing a man, making a
threat to kill during an extortion attempt, attempted theft and dishonesty
offences.
It was nearing the height of Melbourne's gangland
war when Goldman enticed K to his flat to shoot him dead, believing he had
turned police informer.
Justice Robert Redlich told Goldman in 2004:
"Immediately upon K entering your apartment you shot him in the upper
abdomen with a .32 Browning pistol which had been wrapped and concealed in a tea
towel.
"You unsuccessfully attempted to discharge
the pistol on a number of occasions, but the pistol jammed, probably because the
tea towel became caught in the breech of the pistol."
The conversation between Goldman and K went in
part:
Goldman: "On the ground! On the
ground!"
K: "Misha, I didn't do it."
Goldman: "Tell me, bastard. Who did
it!"
K: "Don't shoot! I didn't do it!"
Goldman: "Tell me! Who then? I am going to
shoot."
A wounded K escaped but Goldman shot him in the
head on the nature strip in front of at least three witnesses.
K managed to turn his head as the shot was fired,
the bullet piercing his forehead and exiting under his right eye.
"You viewed K as disloyal -- as one who had
broken the code of silence," Justice Redlich said.
Goldman, 55, said he shot to miss as his wounded acquaintance
lay on the nature strip despite orders from a
psychotic criminal to "finish him".
Goldman said Nik Radev told him earlier the same
day: "Give him one in the head and I take care of the body."
He said he was "under the
gun" and terrified of Radev, who ordered him to kill K.
Dima Mendelis was found sneaking around the Alfred hospital where
K was undergoing treatment after having been shot.
Police believe he was trying to deter the
informer from giving evidence.
Goldman was charged with attempted murder
and other offences.
K was placed in the witness protection program and
later gave evidence, with the help of a Russian interpreter, by a video link
from a secret location.
The informer said Mr Goldman had shot him in his
side and his leg had collapsed under him.
''I immediately turned the kitchen table
upside-down and I started shielding myself with the table'', he said.
Parts of the translation of the recording of the
incident were read to the court.
''Who's fucking let me down?'' Mr Goldman is
alleged to have asked.
The informer swore it was not him and tried to
buy time by offering to name someone, the court heard.
Goldman claimed Radev had forced him to shoot K,
and unsuccessfully appealed against his attempted murder conviction.
On May 27, 2004, Goldman was jailed for 14
years.
Justice Redlich ordered Goldman to serve a
minimum non-parole term of 11 years.
"Your anger and desire to kill him (K)
is evident on listening to the tape recording," said the judge.
The informer is now in the police witness protection
program living under a new identity.
He has since survived a second attempt on his
life interstate while a relative in Belarus has been threatened twice.
In
November 2002, fugitive drug dealer and millionaire businessman, Tony
Mokbel (right) was invited by Mario Condello, an
elder of a crime faction known as the "Carlton Crew", to
a "business meeting".
Mokbel
was kidnapped and savagely beaten by associates of Condello's
group and Nik Radev.
It is believed that one of the men
who delivered the beating was West Australian bikie and sometime Radev
bodyguard, Troy Mercanti.
Sources said
Mokbel was sporting two black eyes.
It has been
reported that suspected hitman, Andrew Veniamin,
then a close friend of Carlton Crew elders, including Condello
and Mick
Gatto, was given the job of transporting the badly injured Mokbel
to hospital and that Veniamin
was convinced by Mokbel to change his allegiances.
Until then Mokbel had been associated with the Carlton Crew, but
switched his own allegiance – and involvement in his drug business – to a violent gang of
up-and-coming criminals from Melbourne's western suburbs.
Adam
Shand, the excellent Bulletin
journalist, wrote that at the Australian Grand Prix in March 2003, Sam
Zayat
Mokbel
saying he was collecting a debt on
behalf of Radev.
That discussion had nearly turned to blows.
Zayat was murdered
six months after his Grand Prix conversation with Mokbel.
Shand
also wrote that
Shand
later wrote that police had two witnesses who were on the scene and that they
had confessed to having a hand in the conspiracy to kill Radev.
On August 7, 2007, a court was told the son of a murdered
gangland figure and the lover of Nik Radev were two members of a group trying to obtain a
shipment of ecstasy pills worth $7million.