Underworld figure Mick Gatto has been arrested by Victorian police investigating “alleged financial offences”.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police said in a statement that detectives from Taskforce Hawk executed a warrant at a Mount Martha property this morning.<\/p>\n
“Two people at the address, a man and a woman both in their 70s, were arrested and are being interviewed by police,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
The ABC has confirmed Mr Gatto is the man who was arrested.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk is an operation dedicated to investigating criminal behaviour in the construction sector.<\/p>\n
Mr Gatto describes himself as a construction industry “mediator and arbitrator” who helps solve disputes between builders and workers.<\/p>\n
But in a report prepared for a Queensland inquiry into the CFMEU published in February, lawyer Geoffrey Watson SC alleged Mr Gatto had held a “malignant influence” on the CFMEU for decades.<\/p>\n
Mr Watson’s report alleged Mr Gatto received millions of dollars in retainers from builders, to prevent shutdowns on their work sites.<\/p>\n
The report described the payments as a “kind of extortion” paid for by the taxpayer.<\/p>\n
In response to Mr Watson’s allegations, Mr Gatto told Melbourne radio station 3AW he was “not above the law” and had no ties to criminal gangs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Underworld figure Mick Gatto has been arrested by Victorian police investigating “alleged financial offences”. Victoria Police said in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45387,48,43,346064,346065,44,32031,41,39,42,40,38297,2024],"class_list":["post-712025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-arrest","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-mick-gatto","tag-mount-martha","tag-news","tag-organised-crime","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-underworld","tag-victoria-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}