The underworld has lost almost $1 billion to federal police seizures across the country, with Sydney’s over-priced real estate, exclusive marinas and supercar dealerships failing to provide safe harbours for criminal fortunes in Australia.this week exclusively reveals the NSW suburbs where underworld money was stashed in bricks and mortar, sometimes in hidden panic rooms, along with diamond-encrusted bras, $40,000 bottles of booze and million-dollar watches.
“What’s interesting about NSW is that criminals are not discriminating about where they’re investing, they’re not just looking at wealthy areas, they’re looking at rural, they’re looking at commercial, across everything, so no area is really left untouched,” Hudson said. “It’s the $40,000 bottles of Cognac, some stuff we can’t even value because there’s no buyer. A handpainted watch, we can’t really value it, but it’s worth more than a million dollars,” Hudson said, reflecting on the taste of the underworld. “The ugly handbags, the diamond-encrusted bra – that’s real. It’s all really gaudy and horrible.”
“If [criminals] lose a bit of a drug consignment, that’s OK. They’ll even do a bit of time in prison. That’s just part of doing business,” Hudson said. “But when they really get hurt is when they lose their homes, their cars and their girlfriends and their wives – it’s when their families are losing.”
Hudson said the taskforce has long surpassed its original goal to “divert” $600 million out of the criminal economy and back into the Australian economy. The assets are now being sold off and banked by the Commonwealth. The commission, according to its latest annual report, confiscated $30 million in the last financial year, $50 million in 2020-21 and almost $31 million in 2019-20.Federal agents in February claimed to have dismantled a $10 billion Chinese money laundering syndicate that had allowed foreign gangsters to pour $157 million into Sydney property.