The Sunday Telegraph, recipient of the Newspaper of The Award in the annual News Awards has been involved in a drama about a photograph they have published to day of nightclub tsar John Ibrahim- the man whose enemies keep (literally) taking pot shots at with very dangerous guns.
Ibrahim lunched at Otto's last Tuesday for the Melbourne Cup celebrations and later attended Famous Magazine's Flapper & Dapper Melbourne Cup party held at one of his Kings Cross nightclubs, The Piano Bar.
The Shuttle was at another table at Otto's with friends and asked the maƮtre de to ask Mr Ibrahim if he would mind posing for a photo (we are ever so polite).
Word came back that he declined as he said he wished to stay out of the media at present (for good reason).
Just to show there were no hard feelings we took one anyway.
Read the story here at the Sunday Telegraph (Newspaper Of The Year!)
Spotted ! : sitting quietly at a table at the Cosmopolitan Cafe in Double Bay, accompanied by a very large gentleman, ex-crime boss Bill Bayeh (John Ibrahim once worked for his brother Louis Bayeh when the pair 'ran' the Cross).
Bayeh was released from Silverwater Jail in July after serving 15 years for drug charges .It
was from the Cosmopolitan Coffee Lounge on Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross (not related to the Double Bay cafe) that Bayeh ran his lucrative drug empire between
December 1995 and July 1996, raking in a reported $2.5 million in six
months.
As part of his parole he is forbidden from entering the Kings Cross nightclub area.
Showing posts with label Louis Bayeh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Louis Bayeh. Show all posts
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Newspaper of The Year Photo Drama
Labels:
Bill Bayeh,
Famous Magazine,
John Ibrahim,
Louis Bayeh,
Piano Bar
Friday, April 9, 2010
Teflon John needs to tone down that profile.
Arriving in Sydney in the early 1990's tSS was fortunate to land a job on a local newspaper covering the inner city. The main beat was Darlinghurst-the Golden Mile of gay Oxford Street , it's surroundings and Kings Cross.
Dawn-ran Oxford Street |
Or the one time champion lesbian ice skater turned nightclub mogul Dawn O'Donnell. A lovely lady to dine with who could talk for hours on which lesbian porn sold to straight men in huge quantities over an after dinner cigar. Dawn would know-she owned a few shops openly selling illicit hard core adult porn.
Costellos fan? |
Kings Cross was something else. Drugs prostitution and live sex shows that made Amserdam look decidedly tame. And there was supposed to be a bar called Costellos beneath the giant Coca Cola sign where 12 year old boys were on tap at the bar. At a later Royal Commission witnesses swore it was true and one even claimed improbably that the late American actor Karl Malden had once visited the bar. Wacky stuff.
And the police. Well they ran the show as journalist Michael Duffy points out in his piece on 2 books to be released by 2 honest cops that got run out of town for their efforts. tSS recalls one quite scary lunch at the Bourbon and Beefsteak
hosted by 4 Kings Cross detectives which we thought was some sort of
community and neighbourhood watch get-together. It turned out to be a
boozy afternoon where one couldn't actually leave and the tales
we heard about who did what to whom and who ran who and was on the take and which politician was in
whose pocket just wasn't what one wished to know. Well certainly not from the cops.
Fortunately they got so drunk one was able to slip out carefully ripping
our name tag into tiny pieces.
Sir Joh-premier of the corrupt Sunshine Coast |
Sunday sees the 2 hour premiere of
Underbelly 3, TheGolden Mile that
continues the tale of the extraordinary corruption of police and the
rule of gangsters during the 1980/1990's before a Royal Commission
finally put paid to a scene that would have made Al Capone envious. The then king of Kings Cross, the 5'4" Abe Saffron known as Mr Sin was only finally put behind bars for tax evasion, just like Capone,despite having a finger in every piece of action.
The series also brings up to date the new breed of local entrepreneurs
who now rule Kings Cross, namely our ever friendly luncheon pal John Ibrahim whose career we have watched flourish ever since he and his younger brother Fadi cornered us in his first nightclub, The Tunnel
in a back laneway and demanded we promote him in the local rag. Why not?. They seemed nice enough lads and despite police saying Telflon John
is now a major 'leading crime figure' he is certainly charming..The
Tunnel was eventualy shut down when the Chinese triad murdered 2 men
outside it's entrance, hacking them to pieces.
friendly Teflon John |
According to Masters the new ruling
mafia in town are the bikie gangs who are so organised they have left
authorities scratching their heads in bewilderment. And they don't take
prisoners. Masters warns that this is new breed of crim who holds no
respect for rank and privilege, as enjoyed by Ibrahim at present, and
will ruthlessly remove him. They are called bikie gangs but they drive
Mercedes and BMWs and wear designer suits. It's said Ibrahim has an interest in about 8 Kings Cross nightclubs and nearly all bouncers in every club including Oxford Street's gay strip are controlled by his firm. The bikies have their own security firm who would like a share of the action.
One honest copper forced out by the bent ones was Deborah Locke who has written a superb book Watching The Detectives in which she describes attempting to report serious misconduct at the Parramatta Police Headquarters only to be taken to lunch by a head honcho with Louis Bayeh-the then drug baron of the Cross and currently doing a few years in prison .It's a superb and racy read and you can order it at Deborah's website.
Another great read is Dirty Work by an honest ex-cop Glen McNamara who fled to California after attempting to report bent cops only to find there was a contract on his life. He was tracked down in an LA motel with a chilling phone call from hitmen saying that they knew where he was, whereupon his pregnant wife miscarried. It's an amazing record of a sorry era in Sydney.
Underbelly-The Golden Mile starts next Sunday 10th April at 8.30pm on the Channel Nine network
Labels:
Abe Saffron,
Al Capone,
Chris Master,
Dawn O'Donnell. Roger Claude Teyssedre,
John Ibrahim,
Karl Malden,
Louis Bayeh,
Ludwig Gertsch,
Sir Joh Belke Petersen,
Underbelly 3 The Golden Mile
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