SYDNEY nightclub owner John Ibrahim was very young when he gave this first revealing interview. THE former king of the Kings Cross strip has returned to what he knows best: The strip club business. Mr Ibrahim claims he took over the "business of protecting businesses" from the Bayehs, prompting the Cosmopolitan Cafe meeting at which Mr Domican was present. Staunton was first stationed at inner-city Redfern where he witnessed policing practices which quickly made him question his choice of employment. We will abide by every single rule here and will be running a 100 per cent clean establishment, he said. BAYEH CHARGED FOR RESISTING ARREST AFTER RIPPING UP NOTE Leanne Edelsten is now an intensive care nurse at St Vincent's Hospital. Johns older brother Hassam, known as Sam, told the Royal Commission he had been helping people out, including protecting drug dealers, around the Cross for years. The 55-year-old sat, seemingly impassive, as his fate was decided, mumbling a barely audible ''thank you, God bless you'' as Judge Terence Christie of the NSW Parole Authority granted him parole after 15 years behind bars. Later John confides: All these people, weve been together since we had nothing. Nationwide News Pty Ltd 2023. Bayehs business partner and the venues licensee Tania Eve, who he has known for more than 30 years, was equally as vigilant on illegal behaviour, describing Love Machine as a cabaret and burlesque gentlemans club. John is reticent to discuss the fight that left him hospitalised for three months with a stab wound in the stomach. His period of dominance in Kings Cross was the inspiration for the third series of the TV drama Underbelly. Bayeh, 56, who was portrayed in Underbelly: The Golden Mile, spent 15 years in prison for cocaine and heroin trafficking. Then the tapes and video footage played in the Wood Royal Commission effectively put Bayeh away. 'I'm a happy man,' the grandfather-of-four says. If it seems sometimes that he lacks respect for the Commission, its because he does. A local bum holds the door open when he sees John, who has been known to sling him a $50 note. You have to be where all the action is. Not long afterwards John dropped out of school. Bill Bayeh was jailed for 15 years for drug trafficking in the 1990s. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. You need a vibrator up your arse, Bayeh responded. If they dont salute, they are a bastard they no good soldier at all. He extended his criminal activities and eventually became known as the Lebanese godfather. That was another episode when we said `Arent you glad to be an Australian?, Then we came home and the Royal Commission had just started.. The inmate who took his place was severely bashed by three other prisoners because Staunton's name card had been left on the outer door. I just want to get on with my life, he said. We used to kick box together. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. The lounge room, covered in thick white carpet, is clean but untidy, giving the impression of an archetypal boys house. It is pretty interesting, especially given his history here.. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones signed the St. Louis Safer Streets bill Wednesday. I have worked with some pretty funny people. He paid police to protect at least 24 gaming clubs and often entertained police officers. However, his paranoia is justified as he discovers the Commission has a lot of incriminating evidence against him. The next night Packer sent a minion to reward Staunton with an envelope full of $100 notes. Theyre more important than money, John confides. All you need to do is get your foot in the door, John says. Were working to restore it. In the TAB John is asking around after his friend when he gestures to a tall skinny man and says quietly: The worst thing you can be in the Cross is a KX (a protected Commission witness) because everyone knows who you are.. In Kings Cross because there were so many people there was a bigger majority. Kim Hollingsworth is expelled from the Goulburn Academy for failing to disclose her work as a prostitute. Staunton was adept at solving legal problems for his associates and became well-known on the Sydney nightclub and music scene. A telescope is trained on the water. If Mr Domican is found to be entitled to any damages, Mr Ibrahim argues they should be minimised by his "bad reputation", among other factors. We eat at the same places and we go to the same clubs, he says. Staunton, whose international criminal partners knew him as 'The Prince', has now written about his colourful life in a book called The Good Bloke. ST. LOUISOn the heels of one of the most deadly years for traffic in the history of the city of St. Louis and a weekend that saw five people killed in a pair of traffic accidents, Mayor Tishaura Jones on Wednesday signed a board bill that commits to spending at least $40 million in federal funds on traffic calming and street redesign measures. Frank Hakim, who emigrated to Australia at the age of 20 or so, was the first prominent Lebanese criminal. In London the pair jumped the queue to get into Wimbledon when Ibrahim bought tickets for the 16 tennis fans behind them. Until last year he was involved with a girl whom he had been dating for 10 years. Later that shift Staunton was told to drive several drunk constables to nearby Moore Park where his colleagues stormed into a toilet block wielding their truncheons at 'poofters'. In the course of them doing their job theyve got to stickybeak everywhere, he says. Their building also backs onto the street. Corrupt King's Cross detectives Trevor Haken and Jim Egan go too far when arresting a pack of drunks, sparking calls for a royal commission into the NSW Police. Naturally this gave him advance notification of every raid, which could be passed on to those who paid him protection. Louis Bayeh swears revenge on Benny Kassab's boys Shaka and Norm Korbage for shooting up his house. Back before the Ibrahims had seriously staked their claim and the Wood Royal Commission exposed the corruption riddling the King Cross police command, Bill Bayeh was ''Billy the Boss''. Having obtained the HSC via correspondence, she enrolls in a detective's course at Goulburn Police Academy. Another hobby is jetskiing. Later, John hitches up his T-shirt to reveal his smooth, hairless abdomen. Believe it or not I did very well at school but it just wasnt for me. 'You Australians are a hard lot,' Trump said to him. Smalltime bouncer Benny Kassab has an audacious plan to become King of the Cross and Tevor Haken's alcoholism takes a toll on his marriage and his ability to manage police corruption. However, after going on a scuba trip with Ibrahim, Wendy starts to have second thoughts. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. Aldermanic Board President Megan Green said traffic education and enforcement would be a priority for the next session of the Board when new members are seated after the April elections. For more information please click here. Along the way he was called upon to keep Paul McCartney and his wife company for an evening and once shared a prison van with backpacker killer Ivan Milat. His older brother, Louis Bayeh, was also jailed in 1997 for perverting the course of justice. I am a Muslim. While still in the force he met underworld figure Louis Bayeh, his brother Bill, a young John Ibrahim and his older sibling Sam - a 'fearless criminal'. Various prohibitions have caused many citizens to engage in criminal behaviour over the subsequent years, most commonly illegal gambling and drinking. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. In custody from 1996, Bayeh was sentenced to 20 years in jail, with a non-parole period of 15 years, a sentence which the panel at yesterday's parole hearing agreed was at the higher end of the sentencing options. I put everything we made back into the club. It was one of the first of what was to become a common form of violence and intimidation by Lebanese gangsters. The 60-year-old is the 'good bloke' of the title and says he lives by two simple rules: Loyalty is everything, and what is morally right and what is legal are not always the same thing. In it Bayeh alleges that Russell (Townsend), Sam Ibrahim and John: They got the whole street. 23:42 GMT 22 Jul 2019 Former Kings Cross underworld figure and convicted drug dealer Bill Bayeh is to be released on parole. According to John, the then owner was being stood over by local heavies and ripped off by his managers. Soon Staunton was moving millions of dollars in cash across continents for the Pacific Mariner Cartel in which he was known by the nickname 'The Prince'. The wars over but the wars still inside the people. Infrastructure work is very complicated. Kim Hollingsworth continues to risk her life to expose Eddie Gould's corruption. Sydney was founded by criminals who for years formed a majority of its population. Pan Macmillan's defence claims it could also be inferred Mr Domican was a violent criminal from a 2002 conviction in Western Australia after he pleaded guilty to threatening to break the neck of a police officer. John believes the shockwaves caused by the Commission have only just begun. People think police are machines. But a group always has a dominant personality.. (AP) Missouri 's governor would control St. Louis police under a bill advanced . Sydneys very small. Together, they form a ruthless gang and set about taking over the King's Cross drug trade. As a young constable Charlie Staunton dreamed of one day becoming commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force. Those who have crossed him no doubt have a different story to tell. This had hardly ever happened before there was an unwritten law among Sydneys criminals that family was to be kept out of business disputes. Benny Kassab, a nightclub bouncer, quells a street brawl and earns the attention of Bill Bayeh. Bayeh, who now lives in the Sydney CBD with his 35-year-old fiance Leyla Yavuz, wants it known that he has no grudge against the two men mainly responsible for his very public demise and eventual jailing, Royal Commissioner James Wood and Council Assisting the Royal Commission John Agius. Danny Karam, a nightclub bouncer who later became one of Bayeh's standover men, remembered that Bayeh was so broke in 1991 he was forced to ask him for $50. Tom Domican, left, is suing John Ibrahim for defamation. With help from drug king Bill Bayeh and his crew, Det. Like most organised criminals in the modern era, they focussed on selling drugs, although standing over other drug dealers and car re-birthing were also popular. Mr Ibrahim also alleges Mr Domican opened his coat to display his gun while telling associates he would "take care" of a rival drug dealer on a Saturday night in 1993. It turned out McPherson already had a direct relationship with the club, and sent a group of men to throw the new machines into the street. The clubs turned over close to $6m in the six years its been there. 'I've met the good, the bad, and the ugly, the famous and the infamous, and for what it's worth, there's good and bad in all of them. she said. Staunton was again brought unstuck by an undercover cop and was arrested in January 1997 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There is not much we can do if he is running a legal business, said a police source. Aware that he is being investigated by the Wood Royal Commission, Dennis Kelly dobs in Jim Egan to investigators. BACK in 1995, John Ibrahim was a brash young nightclub owner who had just come to the attention of the media when he was called before the Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service. The Kings Cross detectives get into a confrontation with some thugs and illegally rough them up. Not content with his position, Kassab begins distributing drugs secretly. It is crisscrossed with scars. As his drug operation grew, Bayeh and his family indulged in the good life. Anything else was probably a waste of time. The comments below have not been moderated, By Hakim got him a job as debt collector with Lennie McPherson, and Bayeh went on to open a gaming club at West Ryde with Hakims approval and then became a major standover man and Kings Cross drug dealer for many years. 'We also had several wonderful young ladies who were more than happy to purport to being "backing vocalists",' he writes. Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia 'I couldn't wait,' he tells Daily Mail Australia. Good cops, bad cops, strippers, gamblers, gunmen, dealers, bouncers, dreamers and bagmen. Closed for two months after a minor liquor licensing violation, John took the opportunity to put a fresh face on the club. It typifies Johns blithe attitude to life. Weve got so many favours owing to us weve lost count.. It takes time and a lot of thought.. Sydney Crime Museum is an online history of crime in Sydney, which has often affected the lives of ordinary people and popular culture as well as corrupting the processes of policing, justice and government. Theres corruption going on in every section where you could do somebody a good turn or a bad turn. Download it here. Bill Bayeh was jailed for 15 years for drug trafficking in the 1990s.Credit:Nick Moir. 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