DEAD rock star Michael Hutchence had property dealings that involved alleged WA mafia figures, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found.
An alleged high-ranking member of the L'Onorata Societa, or Calabrian mafia, and his family are current and former directors of a company which sold a Gold Coast bowling alley for $2.25 million to a trustee company linked to the former INXS frontman.
A top-secret police intelligence report alleged Bruno "The Fox" Romeo was a key member of Italian organised crime groups in Australia.
Investigators in the National Crime Authority raided the Labrador bowling alley in January 1995 as part of a major drugs investigation, Operation Pug, in which a former South Australian man was convicted of cocaine trafficking.
Company records indicate Harbrick Pty Ltd, whose former directors include convicted drug boss Romeo, also borrowed $270,000 as part of the 1994 land deal.
It was also revealed that accountants and lawyers who have acted for Harbrick are now involved in representing companies being sued by Hutchence's mother and stepsister to release millions of dollars in assets allegedly hidden from his will.
The curiously named Nexcess owns the title to the bowling alley on behalf of a trust.
The company is part of a tangled web of eight companies - six of which are based offshore - being sued by Hutchence's mother and stepsister in a bid to force them to declare they hold an estimated $25 million in missing assets hidden from the dead singer's will.
The $270,000 loan to Harbrick - which Australian Securities and Investment Commission records show has not been repaid - was secured against bowling equipment and other fixtures at the Paradise Lanes complex on the Southport Broadwater.
The bowling alley at 378 Marine Pde, Labrador, is one of five multi-million-dollar properties worldwide which Hutchence's mother Patricia Glassop and stepsister Tina Hutchence claim should have been included in the millionaire singer's estate and divided according to his will.
Hutchence committed suicide in a Sydney hotel suite in November 1997.
The NCA's Operation Pug targeted a person associated with Harbrick which continued to run the bowling complex after selling the land it was on to Nexcess.
Bruno Romeo snr, 69, who was jailed for 10 years in 1994 for his role as the ringleader of an $8 million cannabis growing operation on remote pastoral leases in WA, was a director of his family company Harbrick from 1988 to 1990.
His son, Bruno Lee Romeo, 42, who was jailed for eight years in WA in 1987 for conspiring to cultivate a 1.5ha cannabis crop, is still a director of the Queensland-registered firm.
The other director is Romeo snr's son-in-law, Griffith-born Guiseppe "Joe" Sergi, 42, who was sentenced to five years' jail after being convicted over a marijuana crop in 1982.
Guiseppe, the husband of Romeo snr's daughter Caterina, was arrested over one of Victoria's biggest cannabis busts in Shepparton in 1981.
The largest shareholder of Harbrick is Mr Romeo snr's wife Nazzerina. ASIC documents also show the other shares are held by the Romeos' eldest son Domenico "Mick" Romeo, jailed for two years in 1977 and five years in 1982 for cultivating marijuana, and Mr Sergi and his wife Caterina.
Ms Glassop and Ms Hutchence are waging a court battle against the Hong Kong-based executor of Hutchence's will, Andrew Paul, to have the contested assets, including the bowling alley, transferred to the estate.
Their lawyers allege the bowling alley was bought by Nexcess using Hutchence's funds and held in a beneficial trust known as Broadwater controlled by former Hutchence will executor and Gold Coast lawyer Colin Thomas Diamond and his family.
The bowling alley was mortgaged for $2 million in August 1996 to a UK company called Blomep Finance Ltd, a subsidiary of British-Virgin Islands registered Blomep Holdings Ltd.
The loan was refinanced in January 1998 to the State Bank of NSW which holds a $2.3 million mortgage over the site.
Court documents show the accountants and lawyers representing Harbrick in its dealings with the bowling alley purchase and loan agreement also represent a number of offshore companies which, it is claimed, control the singer's assets.
ASIC records show Gold Coast solicitors lodged a deed of charge relating to the bowling alley on behalf of Harbrick in October 1993.
The following year the same firm's principal John Francis Connors witnessed transfer documents relating to Nexcess's purchase of the bowling complex.
Curiously, in June last year the same firm entered a conditional appearance in Queensland's Supreme Court on behalf of five offshore companies which are being sued by Hutchence's mother and stepsister to declare they hold some of the disputed assets, including a London townhouse and French villa, in trust for the singer's estate.