Rocco Arico has just commenced a 14 year jail sentence. Arico, a member of the Calabrian mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, and a person of note in Melbourne’s bloody gangland wars, has more than his jail sentence to worry about.
Arico, 38, known as ‘Rocky’ to his friends and criminal associates, came to Australia with his parents as a young child. He married here and has children but he is a resident, not an Australian citizen. When his jail term ends, Arico will almost certainly be bundled off to Tullamarine Airport and put on a plane back to Italy, deported on character grounds.
Late last year Arico was convicted of extortion, intentionally causing injury and trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine. Details of his conviction were suppressed by the courts while he faced firearms and further drug charges.
Arico first came to my attention when I was making a documentary on the life of one of his associates, Dino Dibra. Dibra was a member of the Sunshine Boys, a gang of young villains most of whom became casualties in Melbourne’s underworld bullet fest. Founding members Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin, Paul Kalipolitis and Mark Mallia are all dead. Dibra was slain in a hail of bullets outside one of his safe houses in Sunshine in Melbourne’s west in October 2000. One of the two shooters was Veniamin.
Full column here.
While…
Sorry, mate. I don’t know much about that. Read a bit after reading your comment and fully accept you may be right but I can’t verify some of your assertions, so…
“The problem is almost everyone who can assist them with their inquiries is either dead or banged up in jail.”
These characters & their associates really don’t ‘endure’ for long periods of time do they JTI? This guy is only 38. I suppose some are born into the business but you’d have to be insane to choose a life where life is so cheap.
Looking at Dibra and the Sunshine Boys, there were elements of a death cult within it. They openly spoke about violent deaths and lionised those who died that way. Dibra died precisely the way he would have wanted – in a hail of gunfire. They had no sense of their futures. A violent death was the preferred option.
JTI,
Unlike some of our Congregation who inhabit and frequent the ‘Northern’ enclaves of Abbottabad, my personal knowledge of the local Underworld Lords and Masters is non-existent!!
What a sheltered existence, I must have had only encountering the ‘Great and the Good’ of our True Believers, our Political Masters and their minions, our Defence Force and their various international peers, not to mention my fellow Australians over the allotted three score years and ten!!
So Off-Topic I offer the following as a possible Matrix for assessing the day to day journey on the political highway, in memory of Toon-Emeritus:
BLEAK TOON RATING DESCRIPTOR
0 An act of such craven self-serving stupidity, so bereft of social values as to defy credence, likely to provoke abstinence and worthy of absolute scorn.
1 An act of self-serving pomposity, so cringeworthy that it actually causes one to spill a drink.
2 An act of such ignorance, so lacking in social awareness that it almost causes one to gag on a favourite drink.
3 An act that clearly invokes a shaking of the head, mirth of the pub-wise humour variety and cries out for piss-taking.
4 An act of general social value to the detriment of personal convenience and worthy of an expression of amazement.
5 An act of manifest social value to the clear detriment of personal reputation and character and worthy of highest praise.
Nice one, PLMO.
Right sonny, you’re nicked! Articles 1 through 3. Put the bracelets on the old geezer Sergeant.
Further charges are being considered, we might throw the book at him for this.
More prejudice from the southside!
Great read JTI. What do you think the relationship between the OMG’s and Ndrangheta is like? It seems that police in most states are targeting the OMG’s and recently getting very good results. Are the bikies just stupid and easy pickings?
The OMG’s main income source is drugs as is (I assume) Ndrangheta’s. They either have a symbiotic relationship or the Italians must be mightily pissed off with them for attracting the attention. Or they’re happy that the enforcement attention is elsewhere?
‘Ndrangheta is King Kong, mate. They run 80 per cent of Europe’s coke. A shitload of heroin into the US of late, too. In terms of turnover, they are bigger than BHP-Billiton. The OMCGs are often players and while some of them have international networks to call upon, they tend to be more localised. There are often alliances of convenience formed. The biggest ecstasy bust in global history happened in June 2007 when Australian Customs intercepted a container with 4.4 tonnes of the drug. The ring leaders were subsequently convicted and given long sentences. They were ‘Ndrangheta members mostly but one was a founding president of the Black Uhlans.
Mac,
Crime is becoming ever more globalised and as such different organisations have found it useful to combine resources, whether that be for a one off job or a more permanent arrangement. Some traditional enemies have even found it practical to join forces from time to time. The world of major and organised crime is dynamic, utilises increasingly sophisticated means to achieve its goals and, more importantly for them, to launder money. Let me assure you the battle continues, with varying rates of successs. The major imposte at the moment being the multinational communications companies allowing access, even with judicial approval, to information. The problem is not restricted just to Australia.
#pray4Italianban
Watched too much Reservoir Dogs. Etc, one assumes. That might do it.
Fascinating article, Jack. What I find scary is that these guys, implicated in murders, drug deals etc were roaming the streets, seemingly untouchable! How much police corruption had to do with that is anyone’s guess. But they did a good job of saving the criminal justice system time and money by slowly but surely thinning their ranks themselves I guess!
BELLA: Here’s a good quote from Henry Thoreau: ”There is no WiFi in the forest, but I promise you’ll find a better connection”. How true.
Not “that” Thoreau surely. He carked it 150 odd years ago.
“Eventually though we realise what we connected to, ‘utopia des la primitiv” is a romantic notion, it dulls the mind ,it itches and it sucks. The call of the cappuccino, the salon and facebook surmounts the call of the wild and beckons us joyfully home.”*
*Elmer Lautrec Baptiste. My great great great great grandfather, 1717 – 1789 , pioneer of the La Foret des Landes communal experiment May to June 1751, author of “Stuff This Dippy Hippy Merde For A Joke” .
Henry David should have read it.
Yeah, you’re right (as usual) JB. Not sure to whom the quote can be attributed. But it’s a nice thought anyway. 🙂
Did you meet any nice trees?
God, thousands of them JB. Magnificent forests. It was hard to leave them
I read about that commune. It was on a meagre 7 acres and quite quickly had gone to the dogs.
Different epoch Milton. The “Commune de la Two Headed Dog” is the one you are thinking of. It ultimately failed but was the foundation and inspiration of the wildly successful ‘Church of the Sacred Cur.”
Here is Kevin Baptiste-Bogle Smythe, now fully grown, one of the children born on the commune and currently our organist at “The Cur”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFAy84Pesb0
They always come a cropper , they never ever think of their citizenship status , how often has that happened in the past , oh well , tough luck Rocco enjoy the porridge and know your plane ticket is waiting….
Not all of them get their comeuppance, mate. Almost all do a stretch in jail at some stage. Only the very smart and very lucky don’t do long ones. Rocco is neither. By the time he’s 50 he’ll have spent more than a third of his life behind bars.
Great read Mr Insider and am a fan of the TV series “Underbelly” and note quite a lot of names there who were in that including the notorious and now late Carl Williams. Have to confess to not knowing of this Rocco Arico but from what you say he isnt a chap you would want to now either. I take my hat off to the Prison officials whose responsibility it is to guard people like Rocco Arico and the like and deportation at the end of his sentence definitely in Australia’s interest imho. I do wonder are todays gangsters worse than yesteryears, the like of McPherson, Smith and Co?
The Sunshine Boys were unbelievable. Arico was more an associate than a part of the group. At 14 – 15 people like Dibra and Veniamin were torturing blokes in garages and running around kneecapping one another. Kalipolitis was older, in his early 20s and mentored the group. None of them had been through youth detention, their parents weren’t crooks. It was difficult to understand why their criminal development became so accelerated. It certainly defied all the accepted wisdom put about by criminologists. Society definitely was not to blame.
Australian real estate=money launderers wet dream
A very funny story and worthy of the person who made “Death in Brunswick”.
Mercifully poor Mad Mladenich was locked up in the boot and spared the indignity of hearing the value of his life whittled down to a couple of family sized pizza’s and some garlic bread. A tough business is crime.
But personally I wouldn’t mind a tax payer funded flight to Italia. If it’s good enough for Amanda Vanstone, it’s good enough for me.
It’s not taxpayer funded, Milton. When a person is deported he or she is required to pay for the cost of airfares and they can’t do a wotif search for cheap fares beforehand.
What happens if they do not have the money?
I believe the Commonwealth extends them a short term loan on terms, JS.
It becomes a debt to the Commonwealth which must be repaid before the person can return to the country.
Which, in the case of people deported on character grounds, means never.
Well obviously, TBLS. I wasn’t suggesting the Commonwealth would be knocking on doors in foreign climes demanding the vig.
No doubt they can dig up the dollars buried in the backyard