A Sydney accountant has been accused of allegedly facilitating money laundering and fraud on behalf of the Alameddine crime network, while one of his clients, an alleged leader of the network, has been charged with mortgage fraud.
George Jack Michael, 43, was arrested in Croydon hours after police executed a search warrant at a taxation office in Sydney’s CBD on the morning of May 13.
Further inquiries led to a charge of mortgage fraud being laid against one of the accountant’s clients, Masood Zakaria, an alleged leader of the Alameddine crime network.
Police allege Michael facilitated money laundering and fraud on behalf of members of the Alameddine network, after the search warrant uncovered both physical and electronic financial records of alleged transactions. The search followed a more than three-year-long investigation into the accountant, first launched in December 2021.
Michael is charged with two counts of publishing false or misleading material to obtain an advantage and two counts of making false documents to obtain financial advantage. He appeared before Burwood Local Court on Tuesday last week, where he was granted conditional bail.
Zakaria, 30, is accused in court documents of being the “head of Proper 60”, an Alameddine organised crime network subgroup.
Masood Zakaria has been charged with mortgage fraud.Credit: Wolter Peeters
The alleged crime boss is currently in prison, awaiting trial over an alleged conspiracy to murder a rival. His lawyers say that prosecution is “doomed to fail”.
Last month, Zakaria’s brother, Dawood, was killed while acting as a bodyguard for a second Alameddine boss when their ute was hit with a hail of bullets in Granville.
