The Comanchero, one of the
most high profile bikie gangs
in Australia, bikie gangs
here in Sydney have all been duped.
The enormous confidence Mark Buddle
has in Mark Buddle, you know, he
just goes and grabs what he wants.
All they talk about is drugs.
Violence hits on each other.
The amount of information that
the police now have is
anybody's guess, and particularly if
I was a Comanchero, I'd be worried
about what they had.
Tell me who Mark Buddle is and how
he fits into the criminal scene in
Australia.
Mark Buddle is a Maroubra
boy from Housing Commission
who became a member of the
Comanchero at an early age,
and he's now risen to be what he
calls the commander of the
Comanchero that's been over the last
decade or so.
He's he's his rise in
in the club.
What kind of power does that give
him?
Complete control of what's
considered probably one
of the most high profile
bikie gangs in Australia
but he has left. He left here in
2016.
He went overseas legally,
but since it has emerged that he's
a major person of interest in
the murder of a security guard in
2010 in the heart of Sydney,
a man called Gary Allibon.
And ever since then, he hasn't come
back, but still hasn't stopped him
from running.
What's considered one of the biggest
drug empires of any Australian
living overseas?
It's believed he's in Dubai.
Is that right? Or Turkey?
Where where Mark Buddle is as we
speak now, is
to believed to be south Lebanon.
He was based in Dubai for
a long time. He was living in a
one of the most exclusive resorts
over there. The Palms delivered a
pretty good life compared to his
origins from Maroubra.
Since there was a big blow up call
and not an encrypted messaging
app called ANOM, which
crooks thought he had their chance
from police.
ANOM was sold to them.
The idea was sold to them by a crook
in San Diego,
saying This is foolproof.
It was basically embraced
by Hakan Arif,
a very, very senior crime
warlord with an enormous
amount of respect in in
Australia and Sydney and the
Comanchero.
So he was the one that kind of
endorsed it.
Unbeknownst every one of those
messages that they were
communicating was being captured
by the FBI and the Australian
Federal Police.
The app was created by
the FBI and
for three years.
Australian police have been
monitoring every
word.
They were talking freely about drug
deals, about hits on people.
The amount of information that
the police now have is
anybody's guess.
And particularly if I was a
Comanchero, I'd be worried
about what they had.
And as I say, we've seen arrests
of quite a few of their members.
The federal police and the FBI
have captured a lot
of communications between
well-known criminal networks around
the world, but particularly
Australians.
So there are a number of areas that
have been arrested because of
that evidence. A lot of them are
Comanchero.
So there is a big problem
there now.
Mark Buddle is still running the
club from wherever he is the Sydney
Commanders. Has There's been about
for the last few years?
The Comanchero bikie gang is under
the spotlight of New South Wales
police because of information
being given from the internet,
because a number of the leaders have
gone overseas, so they considered a
little bit weakened.
Mark Buddle's somewhere in
the world, but not in Australia,
somewhere in the Middle East, we can
assume. And you know, and until
recently, we know he's been living
the high life.
I'd seen stories, I think written
by you that were describing him kind
of hopping between Greek islands
and and chartering private
jets to go to the Super Bowl.
He's having a great time.
Clearly that his lifestyle is being
funded from somewhere.
How is he managing to control
Australian criminal networks from so
far away? How?
How's it kind of working from what
you know?
I mean, there's fear and
fortune, and he has both.
People are scared of him, and he
also has lots of money and he does
pay. Mark Buddle has always had a
very loyal
base of of of enforcers
or of people willing to do whatever
he would like.
And it wasn't long ago that
Mark Buddle sent a message
out about
a mafia style kind of
arrangement he was looking to
introduce called the commission.
Can you tell me about that?
He sent a message out again on an
encrypted device that went around to
most of the criminal in
Australia.
The whole network basically
saying he had appointed himself as
the head of the commission,
where he would basically put a tax
on any importation of any drug
arriving in Australia,
particularly in Sydney.
With for that, he wasn't just
going to take the money.
He said he would ensure
that there would be safe passage,
that people would be able to
distribute their their drugs
safely.
He also said that it would be a way
of helping to control the price
because he's in the in the
the text message.
He said that the price of Fry,
which was ICE, basically
had crashed because of
all the people involved in the drug
world. And he said this way via
basically having a cartel can.
All by him.
The price could be elevated
over a thousand police carrying out
33 search warrants and
helping with 57 others.
Almost all of the arrests here
to do with the illicit drug trade.
So you combine that like
a business cartel with a mafia
style enforcement with
him at the top.
That has led to a lot
of discontent, as you could imagine
amongst drug syndicates
operating in Australia.
It's led to what police believe are
a number of kidnappings
involved in
Sydney, where the
people who weren't supposedly
paying their commission tax
were being kidnapped
and then being held for ransom and
led to what people believed were
some drug rip offs targeting
the buttle syndicates.
So it created
more trouble, I think, than about
have been worth the out.
Although have things
settled down over the last few
months? We won't know until we
really see what happens now that the
lockdown is lifted, and
then we might see the criminal
activity returned to normal
in the region to see how that
plays out for the Comanchero biker
gang. The run in
absentee, if there will be debts
owed, there will be conflict
and there will be someone trying to
step up to fill that gap.
It's an incredibly ballsy
move, isn't it, to to be
in a play the other part of the
world and to just kind of say,
Do you know what I'm doing myself as
the boss of of of all
the drugs that go into that country
and I'm going to tell every other
kind of criminal badass that they
have to pay up to me because I'm the
boss now.
It shows there's
enormous confidence Mark Buddle has
in Mark Buddle. He did it when he
took over the club.
You know, he just goes and grabs
what he wants. And this is again,
he just says, Wait, I'm declaring
this is what's going to happen.
You can't really say
he's backward coming forward.
He's very up front.