by: Paul Whittaker and Rory Callinan
ROCK star Michael Hutchence was involved in property dealings with a company allegedly connected to the mafia, a Courier-Mail investigation has found.
Bruno Romeo Snr, 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 police intelligence report alleged Romeo was a key member of Italian organised crime groups.
The National Crime Authority raided the Labrador bowling alley in 1995 in a cocaine trafficking investigation, Operation Pug. Company records indicate Harbrick Pty Ltd, whose former directors include Bruno "The Fox" Romeo, a convicted drug dealer, also borrowed $270,000 as part of the deal.
Accountants and lawyers who have acted for Harbrick are now representing companies being sued by Hutchence's mother, Patricia Glassop, and stepsister, Tina Hutchence, to release millions of dollars in assets.
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 of the dead singer's assets.
Hutchence committed suicide in Sydney in 1997. 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 Paradise Lanes.
The bowling alley, at 378 Marine Pde, Labrador, is one of five multimillion dollar properties worldwide which Mrs Glassop and Ms Hutchence claim should have been included in the singer's estate and divided according to his will.
The NCA's Operation Pug targeted a person associated with Harbrick, which continued to run the bowling alley after selling the land it was on to Nexcess.
A former South Australian man, who was not a director or shareholder of Harbrick, was convicted for trafficking in cocaine. Bruno Romeo Snr, 69, who was jailed for 10 years in 1994 over his role as the ringleader of an $8 million cannabis- growing operation on remote pastoral leases in Western Australia, was a director of his family company Harbrick from 1988 to 1990.
His son, Bruno Lee Romeo, 42, who was jailed for 8.5 years in Western Australia 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, Guiseppe "Joe" Sergi, 42.
Sergi, from Griffiths, NSW, 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.
The other shares are held by the Romeo's eldest son Domenico "Mick" Romeo, jailed for two years in 1977 and five years in 1982 for cultivating marijuana.
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 his estate.
Their lawyers allege the bowling alley was bought by Nexcess using Hutchence's funds and held in a beneficial trust known as Broadwater. Broadwater is 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.
Andrew Paul is Blomep Finance's sole director and Colin Diamond signed the earlier loan documents.
The loan was refinanced in January 1998 to the State Bank of NSW which holds a $2.3 million mortgage over the site. Mr Paul claims the total net assets for the estate amount to just $1.2 million with the first $800,000 to be divided between two charities.
Court documents show the accountants and lawyers representing Harbrick in its dealings with the bowling alley purchase and loan agreement are also representing a number of offshore companies which it is claimed control the singer's assets.
ASIC records show Gold Coast solicitors J.F. Connors & Associates 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.
Surfers Paradise solicitors Freestone and Kumnick, which lodged charge documents with the ASIC in May 1997 on behalf of Harbrick also entered appearances in the Queensland civil action on behalf of Sin-Can- Can Pty Ltd and Nexcess.
Sin-Can-Can owns a lavish Isle of Capri waterfront mansion bought for $1 million in 1995 which Hutchence told his family he owned. Harbrick and Nexcess have also shared the same accountant.
Tony Alford's Southport accountancy firm was the registered business address for Harbrick from August 1993 until January 27, 1994 - the day before Harbrick sold the bowling alley site to Nexcess.
Mr Alford was appointed as a director of Nexcess on January 28, 1994.
According to his family, Hutchence had lunch at the complex the day sale contracts were exchanged and decided to keep on the existing tenants of the centre's restaurant.
The former lessees of the bowling alley restaurant said Harbrick's directors told them Hutchence had been into the building to inspect the complex before agreeing to buy it.
Mr Alford is also a director of a company called Akcess which now controls the bowling alley.
Mr Paul told the court, through his Brisbane lawyer Joe Ganim, that the disputed property was not and had not been owned by Hutchence or his estate but a complex array of company and trust structures stretching from Australia through to Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.
Efforts to contact Harbrick representatives were unsuccessful yesterday.