Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Underworld figures and bikies have infiltrated major Victorian and NSW construction projects, with some securing jobs as CFMEU delegates and secret surveillance exposing the involvement of notorious gangsters in the industry.has uncovered unprecedented details of senior bikie figures and criminals being parachuted into lucrative union roles, with the problems extending to the Indigenous employment sector.
In one extraordinary case in Melbourne, a convicted criminal and bikie figure appointed as a CFMEU health and safety official, earning an estimated $250,000 a year on one of Labor’s Big Build projects upgrading the Hurstbridge rail line, used a car assigned to conduct worker safety checks to engage in bikie gang activities.
Separately, select CFMEU officials have advised building companies to hire bikie-controlled sub-contractors, or, to retain underworld standover men, including Hells Angels enforcer Sammy “The Turk” Ercan, to handle industry or union disputes. In NSW, accused or convicted criminals are also in plum union posts. Simon Gutierrez, who was jailed for seven months for drug dealing only to be busted again in 2019 with drugs while employed as a union organiser, was recently gifted a union delegate’s job on a joint venture Sydney CBD development funded by the Scentre Group and superannuation giant Cbus.
However, Smith stressed the CFMEU “unapologetically believes in second chances” and construction was one of the few industries where people with a criminal history could find stable jobs critical to rehabilitation.“Mistakes in your past do not mean a lifetime disqualification from serving the members of our union,” he said.
Ney warned the “inappropriate behaviour, extortion and standing over” of “both members within the CFMEU, but also businesses, both small and large” that his investigators uncovered in 2014-15, was continuing at a pace not seen since before the royal commission, “if not worse”.
Documents uncovered by this masthead reveal Orman’s ability to quickly secure multiple CFMEU labour hire agreements enabled him to build his own small construction empire and also – in one striking case – sell a company within days of creating it and just 24 hours after securing it a CFMEU agreement.
“Setting up and then selling it straight away, you can’t help but feel a little bit suspicious,” Ney said. “There might have been shares and directorship transfers for various reasons, to get bank loans or whatever it might be to fund it, but the company’s never been sold or out of my control,” he said.
“He’s trying to push M Group here, M Group there… He never came to the office. It’s all hush-hush,” the former M Group figure said. Surveillance of a Melbourne CBD construction site, the redevelopment of St Vincent’s Hospital, captures Orman onsite managing one of his union-backed companies alongside traffic management employees of the Gatto-linked M Group.
Ashworth, who previously spent years investigating Melbourne’s underworld, said he suspected Gatto’s perceived ability to interfere in building projects was via “union muscle”. A day later, Setka texted Gatto: “thanks brother I really appreciate the support and I’ll never forget it…. F— these prim and proper people have never done it hard in the whole lives… and should probably look up in the dictionary what mateship means.”
A fixture in Melbourne’s underworld, Ercan was in 2019 charged with threatening to kneecap an accountant while brandishing a pistol unless he handed over $500,000. He was convicted in June and is now remanded, awaiting sentencing. In one covertly-recorded discussion, building industry insiders discuss how certain union organisers were, prior to Ercan’s jailing, encouraging firms to hire him to manage building industry disputes.
Subsequent surveillance vision of Ercan also captures him meeting a CFMEU delegate with his own deep underworld links. “What he says, goes,” said Ashworth, noting that police regarded the Mongols as “an organised crime gang.” On the recording, the union delegate describes Solid Seal as a bikie-linked firm and discusses his displeasure at being requested by a union organiser to replace another small building firm with the Bell-linked firm.
Asked this week about whether there was an overlap between his Hells Angels chapter president’s role and his job as union delegate, Montebello issued expletives before hanging up.
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