Underbelly (32 page)

He was close to many senior police, including a deputy police commissioner, Bill Allen, meeting him at police headquarters seven times. It's a wonder he didn't have his own car space. Allen was later jailed for bribing the head of the Special Licensing Police on five occasions.

It was no surprise to anyone that Bill Allen was on the take. Victoria Police had information Allen was regularly paying a senior New South Wales minister $5000 from illegal gambling interests. When the information was passed to New South Wales police their response was to ask what it had to do with an outside law enforcement agency. They
would deal with their own. And they did, usually with brown paper bags filled with used cash. Roger that.

Unsurprisingly, it was not the New South Wales police that broke Saffron's vice-like grip on vice.

Justice Stewart was a former New South Wales policeman who knew first hand how some elements of the force worked. He studied law later, becoming a judge and Royal Commissioner.

When he became Chairman of the National Crime Authority he was given 42 references from the Costigan Commission and while he didn't pursue all of them, he decided it was time Mr Sin was in the bin.

His plan was to do an Al Capone on the Teflon-coated crook and chase the black money, but it would not be easy.

‘Saffron was notorious in Sydney as being untouchable. He was a corrupter of police and others. I took the view that this man had got away with so much for so long it was about time we tried to stop it,' Justice Stewart would later recall.

‘I had some knowledge of him that I had come across in my Royal Commission and it was quite sickening.'

It took four years before the National Crime Authority was ready to move and Saffron seemed to think he would beat any investigation. ‘He thought he was bulletproof. He knew the New South Wales police weren't going to do anything about him,' Stewart said.

Why wouldn't he be confident? He had beaten every previous attempt to stop him. His complex financial network involved 60 companies and a web of legal and illegal enterprises that had defeated the tax department and police around the country.

According to Abe's son, Alan, in his book,
Gentle Satan
, Saffron turned to his crooked network for help. ‘One of Dad's New South Wales police friends was able to secure entry into the National Crime Authority headquarters in Melbourne and copy an entire file on my father.'

Stewart would recall that when the penny dropped with Saffron in November 1985 that he was in deep trouble he needed to spend one – urgently.

The former Royal Commissioner Stewart told
The Australian
newspaper. ‘When the National Crime Authority team led by a seconded Victorian went to search the mobster's luxury home he came to the door clad in a pair of red boxer shorts and nothing else'.

According to Stewart, after the search police handed him his arrest warrant and Abe lost the plot – and control of his bowels.

‘His red shorts turned yellow and they had to take him to the bathroom to clean him up,' Stewart remembered.

That's his story and he's sticking to it.

On the morning of Saffron's arrest police were not sure if he was at home or spending the night with one of his girlfriends. He had many phones but one number was reserved for a handful of his closest associates.

Chief Investigator Carl Mengler had managed to find the number and rang it that morning. When the telephone was answered, Mengler said, ‘Abe, is that you Abe?'

The male voice at the other end asked: ‘Who is that?'

Mengler responded, ‘Abe, is that you?'

Again the voice asked ‘Who is speaking, please?'

Mengler tried a third time and then muttered, ‘Bloody phones,' to suggest he couldn't hear properly and hung up.
He had all he needed to know: Abe was home.

Not surprisingly, given his ‘accident', Saffron was allowed to shower and change after his arrest. One investigator later said it was the first time he had escorted a man to court who was wearing Italian shoes, silk socks and a $5000 suit. Soon his designer clothes would be replaced by prison overalls.

As part of the probe, National Crime Authority investigators searched his huge strong room filled with documents.

‘He stood in the door as we went in. He was just smiling as though to say, “If I shut the door they'd never find you”.'

He was subsequently charged with tax frauds from 1969 until 1981. No wonder he needed a drycleaner.

Many of the Crown's claims, including bribing police, fell over but the big one stood. It was simple: as Jim Alexander had told authorities. Saffron's clubs ran two sets of books. One ‘white' set, that were declared and taxed, and a second ‘black' set, in which illicit profits were hidden and from which bribes were paid.

Saffron was convicted on the fourth attempt and sentenced to three years jail. He was released on 12 March 1990 after serving seventeen months with remissions for good behaviour.

Even in jail Abe tried to get others to do his dirty work.

Stewart would tell the ABC he was told Saffron plotted to kill him while behind bars. ‘He was sharing a cell with another man who in fact was one of his employees. And the jail authorities told me and others in our organisation that they had put a listening device in the cell that was being shared by these two prisoners, and they heard that they
were plotting that when the other man got out, which was going to be soon – he was getting out on parole or his sentence was over, one of the two – that he would put into effect a plan to kill me. And then I'm not sure one way or the other whether the man actually ever tried to do anything, but he certainly killed somebody when he got out. He killed a woman, murdered her, and was convicted of murder as I remember it, in one of Abe Saffron's sex parlours in Darlinghurst Road in some sort of a sadomasochistic affair.'

Many expected that, at 69, Saffron would withdraw to his luxury home, but he returned to business, concentrating on building an even more complex corporate structure so he would never again be caught with his red shorts down.

Old, rich and in relative good health, Saffron could have spent his autumn years in relative anonymity in his Vaucluse mansion but he remained unfulfilled.

Saffron was richer than he had ever been. There is no doubt he had a brilliant business brain and had invested soundly and legitimately in properties and companies.

But that was not enough. He was either so arrogant or deluded (or perhaps both) that he was obsessed with rewriting history. He wanted to be remembered as a businessman and benefactor rather than the glorified pimp and sly grog dealer he was.

Saffron had lost his circle of influence. The police he had bribed had retired, dropped dead or been locked up. The politicians he had duchessed were out of office or dead and the judges and lawyers he once could have blackmailed with his dirt file had passed away or had become irrelevant.

According to his son, Alan, in
Gentle Satan
, he even tried to contact the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. But the
‘Prime Minister wouldn't take his call.' What a surprise.

Saffron boasted privately of having sent millions to Israel to ‘buy tanks' and he donated heavily to Jewish charities, but it could not buy him the respectability he belatedly craved. They would take his money and make soothing noises but they could not change (or privately forget) the fact that he had always been a crook and a deviate. No matter how much cash he splashed on schools or Israeli arms, he was an embarrassment to his co-religionists.

But he still had money and no sense of shame. He embarked on a bizarre campaign using (or misusing) the courts he had spent a lifetime trying to avoid in a bid to rebuild his reputation.

But you can't buy integrity and you can't hold back the tide of public opinion.

He first was found not to be a ‘fit and proper person' in Western Australia by the Gaming Commission. It's hard to declare a convicted tax cheat ‘fit and proper', even in the freewheeling WA Inc. of Bond, Connell and Burke. He appealed and fought a doomed case.

Next he was banned from holding a liquor licence in Perth. All his legal attempts to fight the rulings were doomed because the courts accepted he was a dirty rotten liar and his evidence could never be believed unless there were legitimate documents to back him up.

In his home state he applied for a liquor licence and was knocked back. When he filled out his application he failed to mention his prior convictions. Seventeen months jail had slipped his mind.

Oops.

Racing and gaming Minister Jack Face came off the long
run, describing Abe as ‘everything that is evil.'He said Saffron would never get a licence in the industry he had ‘disgraced and degraded over the years by his actions.'

Saffron spent a fortune appealing his tax convictions. He would have been better spending the money on a time machine if he wanted so badly to change the past.

When his appeal process was exhausted he said he would ask for a pardon, maintaining his innocence against overwhelming evidence.

Having discovered that he couldn't change the past he began to try and protect the present, issuing a series of defamation writs against anyone who dared bring up his past. No longer able to bully with muscle or ‘torches', he took to issuing writs to anyone who referred to him as ‘Mr Sin', the nickname that had dogged him for years.

He dropped a writ on the
Sydney Morning Herald
and was blown away. He issued another one against the
Gold Coast Bulletin
over a crossword.

The clue: Sydney underworld figure, nicknamed Mr Sin.

The answer: Abe Saffron.

He also issued against the authors of this book over a classic of its genre,
Tough: 101 Australian Gangsters
. His lawyers issued two years after the book was published. The writ claimed Saffron was defamed eight times – not bad value for money in just over two pages.

It listed the ‘defamatory' claims as that:

He was an Australian gangster. (He was).

He offered bribes to police. (He did).

He whipped a girl. (He did).

He was described as completely depraved. (He was).

Had an Australia-wide reputation as a crime boss. (D'oh!)

Had caused six suspicious fires. (Pass the matches).

Was arrested by the NCA and charged with tax evasion. (Remember his shorts).

He was jailed for tax evasion. (It was technically conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth of taxes. Same thing.)

We were confident of winning the case on two grounds. Saffron was a crook and his reputation could not be damaged as he didn't have one. After all, he had gone to jail, had been named in countless Royal Commissions as disreputable, had been refused licences in two states on the grounds he was not a fit and proper person and had been found to be a liar by more than one court.

But one of the serious limitations of the defamation laws is that they cater for the rich. It is well known in media circles that if you are to defame someone, make sure they aren't loaded.

Poor people can't afford the costs and solid workers can't afford the time.

But Saffron had time and millions of dollars on his hands. His plan was to fire off writs, not to clear his name but (it seems clear) to deter others from writing an unauthorised biography (He would have hated Reeves' warts-and-all book
Mr Sin
but didn't live to see it published.)

He wanted to be seen as a kind old man with a dickie heart rather than as the younger version, who was just a heartless dick.

A jury of four knocked back some grounds but accepted others. Strangely, the jurors said he was defamed by being
described as a crime boss, that he had offered bribes to police and had been arrested by the NCA and jailed over tax evasion (What?).

Yet he was apparently not defamed by being referred to as ‘Mr Sin', whipping a girl and setting up six arsons (Go figure).

This was not, as reported, a victory for Saffron. It was just round one. A full trial where the allegations would be tested was yet to come. Former police, authors, colourful racing identities and a few gangsters were prepared to make sure Abe would never win round two.

In the end, Saffron chose to withdraw on condition a small proportion of his legal fees were paid. The deal was done. No money went to Saffron. More importantly, the allegations were never withdrawn and the book remains in print. In fact, the Saffron writ increased sales.

As usual, when push came to shove Saffron backed down.

He knew if he went into open court the grimy past he was trying to bury would again become headline news.

Australia's colourful history is speckled with kind-hearted madams, likeable publicans who bent the rules and SP bookmakers who loved a punt.

Saffron was different. He didn't provide for people's secret desires – he exploited them. He funded an empire by finding individual and collective weaknesses and energetically enlarging them for his own profit. He was a maggot in an open wound.

He photographed prominent people in compromising sexual positions, forcing them to betray their duty in order
to protect Saffron. He was not the first to offer bribes to officials but by catering to the base greed of many, he was able to erode the criminal justice system and the political process.

In his last few years he gave millions to charity but to most people in Australia he remained Mr Sin – the title he had spent a fortune trying to shed.

He suffered a heart attack in Israel in July 2006 but it wasn't fatal. He returned to Australia. While undergoing a relatively minor operation on his ankle he died in Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital on 15 September the same year. He was 86.

There were only 120 people at his funeral and none of them were politicians, police or TV stars. The cult of celebrity he had once pursued had moved on, leaving him where he belonged: a dirty old man in disgrace.

He left his legitimate and illegitimate families to squabble over his $25 million fortune.