A leading Australian infrastructure firm working on major state and federally backed projects has been implicated in a suspected plot that allegedly saw a crew of Melbourne bikie enforcers travel to Brisbane to threaten to burn down the house and kill the children of a CFMEU activist.
A blow-by-blow account of the alleged stand-over plot was unveiled during the grilling of an executive from construction giant BMD at the Queensland’s Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU and building industry misconduct.
But rather than the focus being on the misdeeds of the construction union, the commission heard that BMD’s security firm had recruited three feared Melbourne Comanchero identities to confront a CFMEU activist as he worked his crane shift on the Albanese and Queensland government-funded $350 million Centenary Bridge project in June 2024.
The revelations at the Queensland inquiry give Australians a taste of what is likely to be unveiled at the promised and upcoming Victorian royal commission. Half of the key subjects at Tuesday’s hearing in Brisbane were from Melbourne and are variously entrenched in both Victoria’s underworld and its building sector.
The hearing has also placed immense scrutiny on BMD, which is currently working Victoria’s Eastern Freeway Upgrade, the new Western Sydney International Airport and Queensland’s Rockhampton Ring Road.
Asked about the evidence heard at the commission suggesting BMD associated with underworld-linked figures in the alleged Centenary Bridge stand-over incident and whether BMD’s internal investigations into the matter was adequate, the company’s spokesperson said: “BMD has additional representatives to appear over the coming days and it would be premature for us to comment.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the commission heard crane driver Cody Raymond had alleged in a statement that during the 2024 altercation, the now former Melbourne-based president of the Comancheros, Bemir Saracevic, introduced himself as “Benji from the Comos” and said he represented BMD’s security firm, Host.
The statement claimed Saracevic threatened extreme violence after Raymond allegedly argued days earlier with Host’s owner, Melbourne businessman Gary Samuel. Raymond had been suspected by Samuel of leaking information about the BMD project to the CFMEU, the commission heard.
Months before the stand-over, BMD hired Samuel and his company Host to counter the CFMEU’s increasingly aggressive tactics on the bridge project.
The union ultimately wanted to force BMD, which is aligned to the rival Australian Workers Union, to bow to CFMEU demands.
Raymond, an active CFMEU member, said in his statement that, as Samuel watched on, Saracevic, backed by two Comanchero gang affiliates, told him he would “f—ing burn your house down c— and kill your kids”.
Saracevic also allegedly told Raymond that “I know where you live” and, in audio captured on CCTV of the incident, warned that he should not contact the police.
The two other bikie-linked men with Saracevic were Mark Ahern, a former treasurer of the Comancheros who was jailed for torching a Melbourne strip club in 2016, and Kristomir Bjelogrlic, a senior gang associate with extensive interests in Victoria’s construction industry.
BMD executive Robert Pickard repeatedly denied knowing about the presence or actions of the Melbourne Comanchero trio under a grilling from counsel assisting Eddy Gisonda.
The evidence, including phone records and CCTV, showed that Pickard and a fellow BMD executive, human resources chief Steve Thomas, were in frequent phone contact with Samuel as he ferried the Comancheros from Brisbane airport to confront Raymond.
CCTV also showed Pickard and Thomas emerging from a carpark moments before the bikie trio and Samuel also appeared to walk from the same carpark.
Pickard and Thomas also appeared on the CCTV to be leading, at a distance of about 80 metres, the Comanchero figures and Samuel as they approached the Centenary Bridge project where Raymond was operating his crane.
When the four men initially confronted him, Raymond said he “felt like they were ready to roll on gang bash me”.
Pickard strongly denied that he was working with or knew anything about the bikie-linked trio or their confrontation of Raymond until the crane driver complained about the alleged stand-over shortly after it occurred and Pickard ordered an investigation.
Gisonda told Commissioner Stuart Wood, KC, that there was no evidence that Pickard or Thomas had communicated directly with the Comanchero trio, instead saying the “common link” between the gang affiliated men and BMD was Samuel.
During his questioning on Tuesday, Pickard denied Raymond’s statement that he had volunteered to help “squash” the fall-out from the Centenary Bridge incident by leveraging BMD’s influence over Host as its security sub-contractor.
Pickard also said he had no recollection of saying that he knew Host was linked to the Comancheros, while the CFMEU was linked to the Bandidos.
Instead, the senior BMD executive told the commission he offered Raymond his sympathy for being on the receiving end of threats, saying that it was “unacceptable for any wife or other family members to be feeling that way, including himself [Raymond]” .
With the questioning of Pickard set to continue on Wednesday, BMD is now embroiled in a potentially growing scandal given that the evidence led by Gisonda places the infrastructure giant in close proximity to an alleged underworld stand-over on a taxpayer-backed site. BMD’s hiring of Samuel also raises major questions for the firm.
In June last year, an investigation by this masthead demonstrated that basic due diligence would have revealed Samuel’s repeated business dealings with Melbourne’s underworld.
For instance, historical records available online from Victoria’s Lawyer X Royal Commission show that, in 2011, Samuel advised a building firm owned by Mick Gatto and his fellow underworld identity Mat Tomas. Tomas and Gatto both achieved notoriety in the 2000s by beating gangland murder charges, and, by separately forging deep ties to former CFMEU boss John Setka.
Samuel later went into a failed business venture with Tomas and also ran the Victorian operations of the now-deceased labour hire king Kevin McHugh, whom federal police charged in 2020 with money laundering offences and tax fraud and who was also an associate of corrupt NSW CFMEU boss Darren Greenfield.
Samuel declined to answer specific questions when quizzed by this masthead last year, but said in a statement at the time that it was “important to acknowledge the ongoing rivalry between the CFMEU and the AWU” and that “certain factions of the CFMEU have been linked to organised crime”.
“Our company is law-abiding and has no link to organised crime,” he said.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
