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For gangland police, years of work had been leading to one day; they had intercepted phone calls, listened to conversations, surveilled targets and slowly but surely built briefs of evidence on Sydney’s underworld powerbrokers.
In the early hours of a Wednesday morning, a little over two years ago, they moved in – 250 officers across the city’s south-west pounced in one of the most significant operations carried out by anti-gang police. Their targets – alleged senior members of the Alameddine organised crime network.
By then, many of its highest-ranking members, including patriarch Rafat Alameddine, had fled the country for the safety of the Middle East. Left behind was a criminal syndicate estimated to be making $1 million a week from a sprawling drug trafficking empire.
As the Alameddine family’s grip on the city’s lucrative drug trade increased, so too did the efforts of detectives on its tail. Finally, after years of pursuing the network’s upper echelons, they had broken through.
Having rounded up 16 people, including the family’s alleged local leader, Ali Elmoubayed, the message was clear: the Alameddine network’s Australian operations were all but finished, the infamous group had been eradicated, NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson said in March 2024.
To the network’s puppet-masters abroad, the arrests signalled authorities’ focus despite their relocation. To the Alameddines’ underworld rivals, it signalled a shift in Sydney’s criminal landscape; no longer did the Merrylands clan rule the roost. The city was up for grabs.
So swift has the downfall of Sydney’s most notorious crime family been since that senior police regard the Alameddine network as remaining in name only. As its once-feared enforcers have fled, been jailed or killed, its long-held grasp of the city’s illicit drug market has weakened. With a lack of local leadership, the struggle for a seat atop Sydney’s underworld has become a free-for-all; even the family’s most loyal followers have abandoned their allegiances to cash in on the city’s insatiable appetite for cocaine and methamphetamine.
Members of KVT – a street gang comprising predominantly men of Fijian descent and long used by the Alameddine network as muscle – cut ties with their one-time allies during a mass exodus of powerbrokers from the crime family. Now, up against a contingent of turncoats and underworld upstarts, remaining members of the Alameddine network have become a hunted species.
In January, the self-proclaimed Coconut Cartel firebombed the western Sydney home of Rafat Alameddine’s cousin, Bilal Alameddine. The cartel, comprising defected Alameddine network members and others vying for control of Sydney’s underbelly, vowed to “chalk out” any loyalists still flying the family’s flag; a line was drawn in the sand and war declared.
The attacks since have been unrelenting and unwavering. In April, Rafat Alameddine’s vacant Merrylands home was peppered with bullets in a drive-by shooting, while homes and businesses linked to his brother-in-law, Asaad Alahmad, were targeted. Alahmad has been jailed for his involvement in Ready 4 War, the Alameddine network’s drug-trafficking operation.
The Coconut Cartel, which has rebranded several times in the past year, has claimed responsibility for the attacks under several gang names spruiked to gain notoriety. One, the so-called “Lone Wolves”, took the credit for several incidents in Sydney targeting the Alameddine network’s offshore leadership.
The group, through video of their attacks and communications shared with burgeoning social media channel SCN Worldstar, promised an ever-increasing assault on the network. Day by day, the group said after claiming credit for an arson attack in April, it would drive the Alameddine network out of Sydney with the help of insiders willing to share the syndicate’s secrets.
Another group believed to comprise alleged Coconut Cartel associates and members – dubbed the OC Jail Gang – also pledged its support to “eradicate” the Alameddines.
In late May, the Alameddine network appeared to take credit for the killing of senior Coconut Cartel member Lorenzo Lemalu in Ho Chi Minh City. However, law enforcement officials who have long investigated the once-feared family doubt their under-siege network is capable of planning and executing a sophisticated overseas assassination.
Despite the crumbling of his local syndicate, police intelligence suggests Rafat Alameddine remains a major player in large-scale drug importations. From his Lebanon base, the 35-year-old – who remains wanted by NSW Police over an alleged plot to murder gangland rival Ibrahem Hamze – is believed to be coordinating importations of cocaine and methamphetamine from Central and South America.
“At the centre of all of this is the drug trade – particularly methamphetamine and cocaine – and the ongoing demand for these substances in Australia,” NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Cook says. “The volume being imported into NSW remains a significant concern because of the harm these drugs cause in our community.”
Closer to home, one of the last remaining alleged high-profile members of the network left on Sydney’s streets, the rapper “Ay Huncho”, recently heeded years of police warnings and left NSW after several threats to his life, including what detectives say was a foiled attempt to assassinate him in April. After a group of masked men allegedly kidnapped and beat his bodyguard in a late-night ambush, the rapper, whose legal name is Ali Younes, finally made himself scarce, relocating interstate.
In May, Elmoubayed’s home was peppered with bullets as the 33-year-old languishes in custody, having been charged in December with plotting to murder a former ally, whose defection from the Alameddine network was the catalyst for months of tit-for-tat shootings and assassination attempts.
Whatever their title, the groups targeting the Alameddine network have a common goal: seizing control of the underworld from its long-time rulers. “What we’re seeing now involves competing groups, shifting alliances and external actors trying to assert control,” Cook says.
“These are loose, opportunistic networks with no hierarchy, no discipline and no long‑term loyalty. That lack of structure is one of the reasons conflicts escalate so quickly.”
For police investigating the increased targeting of the Alameddine network, the blurred lines of the family’s rivals and the shifting criminal landscape present an increasingly challenging task; in a world where loyalty was a criminal’s most valuable asset, it is now a tradeable commodity. “The reality is that contract criminals move between groups, sometimes working for both sides of a conflict,” Cook says.
Recent drug seizures indicate South-East Asian organised crime groups have all but taken control of Sydney’s underworld from the Alameddine family. Overseas-based alleged kingpins, including former Sydney man Daniel Rodney Badger, have become the focus of detectives investigating the flow of drugs into Australia as criminal organisations band together to control the manufacture and supply of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.
“When we dismantle one group, others step in to take the work and then we target them,” Cook says. “It’s a cycle we’re very familiar with.”
Despite the distance between those police believe are pulling the strings abroad and the violence on Sydney’s streets, apprehending overseas-based organised crime figures is one of NSW Police’s highest priorities.
“They hide behind foreign jurisdictions and encrypted platforms, but they are not out of reach,” Cook says. “When opportunities arise, we act. It may take time, but we don’t lose sight of them.”
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