Twelve people were arrested on March 17 as part of an investigation into alleged extortions of tobacco stores linked to a Middle Eastern organised crime syndicate.
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00:00Police will allege that the 10 persons who were arrested in relation to extortion were
00:05doing so under a syndicate operation which is headed by a person who lives offshore,
00:10a person by the name of Kazim Hamid.
00:12This group has been operating for some time and causing significant harm to the community.
00:18Today detectives from the Lunar Taskforce who were accompanied by detectives from the
00:22Viper Taskforce as well as members from the North West Metro Regional Crime Squad executed
00:2814 search warrants across mainly the north-western parts of Melbourne, predominantly on residential
00:36properties, but also on a storage facility.
00:41Twelve persons were arrested as a result of those search warrants, ten of those people
00:46were persons of interest to the taskforce and were going to be arrested when found.
00:51Two others were just incidental, they are criminals and they were committing crime so
00:56they were arrested for those matters but not related to Lunar matters or illicit tobacco.
01:02Of the ten of those people, all will be charged with extortion related matters and eight of
01:08those will be bailed to appear at the Magistrates Court at Melbourne I think on Thursday and
01:12two people later today will be brought before the Magistrates Court and a remand application
01:18will be sought.
01:19There were significant items seized during the search warrants which included two high
01:25powered rifles, they are semi-automatic in nature, they appear to have commercial grade
01:32suppressors which for all intents and purposes make them relatively solid in operation, generally
01:37only used for illicit purposes and a handgun, a shotgun and of great concern some commercial
01:46grade explosives.
01:47There were also three vehicles seized, in one of the vehicles there were a number of
01:52handwritten notes which are very similar in nature and content to other notes that
01:57have been handed to victims of extortions at illicit tobacco shops.
02:03There were also knives and GPS trackers as well as a significant quantity of cash, vapes
02:10and illicit or loose leaf tobacco.
02:22For more information visit www.fema.gov