Video: Melbourne underworld sorts out Opes Prime

http://www.interest.co.nz

It has emerged this morning in The Age newspaper that clients of Opes Prime with connections to Melbourne's underworld have asked Mick Gatto, a man who killed a gangland assassin just four years ago, to hunt down missing money in Singapore and the British Virgin Islands.

The Opes Prime clients, who along with thousands of others have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, are said to have connections to notorious Melbourne gangland boss Tony Mokbel, who is the subject of the "Underbelly" television series now showing on TV3.

Gatto, who is described as the one-time leader of the "Carlton Crew" in The Australian, now runs a mediation and arbitration business that promises to "make problems disappear." He has been employed in the past to end feuds on construction sites.

The chief executive of Opes Prime, Laurie Emini, and director Julian Smith have been forced to give up their passports by the authorities and are now being investigated over "irregularities" in Opes Prime's accounts. Documents presented in Australian courts show Emini ordered staff to doctor the accounts of six favoured clients so they didn't have to receive margin calls worth A$200 million. These clients include high profile Sydney criminal defence barrister Chris Murphy.

The fallout from Opes Prime for ANZ continues to darken. ANZ and Merrill Lynch essentially repossessed over A$1 billion worth of shares held apparently on behalf of Opes Prime clients by Opes Prime. It turns out ANZ and Merrill had been granted ownership of the shares as part of Opes Prime's complicated margin lending operation, which many clients were unaware of and are now furious about.

ANZ now faces investor outrage and multiple lawsuits over its sale of A$650 million of shares onto the open market. Many smaller companies have had to halt trade in their shares because ANZ now owns significant stakes once owned by company directors, including former Olympic running star Herb Elliott.

ANZ chief executive Mike Smith acknowledged the damage that was being done to ANZ's reputation by the Opes Prime saga in a conference call yesterday with analysts, although he reiterated that ANZ did not expect to take any material losses from its Opes Prime exposure. An interesting piece here from Robert Gottliebsen in Business Spectator warns ANZ of the dangers of reputational damage, harking back to the Westpac letters affair of the late 1980s.

ANZ released the list of 90 companies in which it holds or held shares because of the Opes Prime Collapse. The list includes a 16% stake in collapsed property investment scheme group Blue Chip Financial Solutions once held by Mark Bryers. Blue Chip's shares have been suspended from the Australian market since February.

So failed Blue Chip founder Mark Bryers sits alongside members of Melbourne's criminal fraternity as a loser from the Opes Prime collapse. Perhaps there is some justice in the world after all.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Commentary
• Analysis
• Documentary
• Political
• Commercial
• News
• Grassroots
• Outreach
• Gotcha!

[bitzamalony]

fuckn downies

[kelpend555]

Gatto was never going to get a cent for the Opes clients. Hes just a deluded two bit crook who is starting to believe his own bullshit. He's such a twit he even threatened to kill Derryn Hinch while on radio. Derryn has nothing to worry about though. Gatto is under investigation and will soon be doing a 30 stretch along with his other mate Carl Williams. Two fat turds in the same bowl waiting to be flushed.

[andrewykl]

horrible reporting

[Gazzmo3156]

This animal should have been locked up like hanibal lecktar and caged then put on board a airforce non luxury hercules aircraft, if thirsty..., hose him down