‘Just the way I am': Labor mayor's long list of political and criminal connections

The Age

2 days ago

When detectives swarmed the headquarters of the Dandenong Thunder Football Club on a warm morning in mid-December, the phone of a local – and highly influential – Labor Party figure lit up.
Jim Memeti's influence extends from the semi-professional National Premier League and surrounding municipality of Greater Dandenong – where he is in his sixth stint as mayor – to Spring Street and Canberra.
Memeti has long been welcome in the parliamentary offices of select federal and state Labor MPs and ministers who leverage off the Balkans-born chicken shop mogul's status as an Albanian community powerbroker to secure votes.
Support has flowed two ways. In late 2023, Memeti successfully lobbied state Labor and his own council for $700,000 in taxpayer funds to improve the home ground of his beloved Thunder, having already helped to extract a $700,000 commitment from federal Labor to build an Albanian community centre in Dandenong.
Two-and-a-half weeks before police raided Thunder's headquarters, Memeti travelled to Canberra where he met Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as part of a Parliamentary Friends of Albania function at Parliament House attended by two of his closest federal Labor colleagues, ministers Julian Hill and then-attorney-general Mark Dreyfus.
But on December 12, it was those in Memeti's non-political circles that had captured the interest of police and caused his phone to start buzzing.
Police not only raided Thunder's headquarters but swooped on three homes, arresting Memeti's son-in-law, his son-in-law's brother and the mayor's nephew.
The trio were targeted over police suspicions they were using inside information to bet on the outcome of two games in 2024 lost by Thunder against underdogs, confirmed by this masthead to be the St Albans Saints and Moreland City FC.
During the raids, detectives also discovered small bags of cocaine, a hydroponic cannabis crop and banned anabolic steroids.
It wasn't the first time Memeti's phone had rung with news that authorities were accusing men he knew of serious wrongdoing.
Eleven months earlier, in late January 2024, NSW counter-organised crime detectives busted drug trafficker Stase Ognenov with three kilograms of cocaine he had collected after driving north from his Dandenong home.
Police soon made a curious discovery. Ognenov, who had done almost five years' jail time in the late 1990s for heroin trafficking, was a tenant in one of Memeti's investment properties.
After checking his phone records, police also uncovered that Ognenov was in contact with Memeti, including during the trip to NSW that culminated in his arrest.
Nine months later, during a separate investigation, other men known to Memeti fell into the law-enforcement frame.
In October 2024, Victoria Police's criminal proceeds squad used unexplained wealth legislation to seize millions of dollars of property belonging to a father-and-son duo, Fari and Ferdi Lumanovski.
The mayor had previously helped Fari stave off deportation, vouching for him in a statement aired during a migration tribunal hearing in 2019. Despite being advised of Fari's serious criminal past, Memeti advised the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that Fari was a good guy deserving of a second chance.
At the time Victoria Police launched still-ongoing proceeds of crime action targeting the Lumanovskis, Fari's son, Ferdi, was known to Memeti not just via his father but due to Ferdi's role as the president of Dandenong Thunder.
Ferdi was leading the club when it received the taxpayer funding for which Memeti had lobbied, and can be seen posing in pictures with the mayor and Labor politicians in October 2023.
Other Albanian men targeted by law enforcement appear in other political happy snaps.
In a photo taken last year, Memeti can be seen posing with federal Labor MP Cassandra Fernando and Albanian criminal Emiljan Hamataj, who was arrested in mid-2021 by federal police for money laundering and cannabis production. He was convicted in January.
When Memeti travelled to Canberra to meet the prime minister with a delegation of senior Albanian-Australian leaders, a small number of less-savoury community members tagged along.
A video unearthed by this masthead shows a man suspected by law enforcement to be at the upper echelons of Albanian organised crime in Australia shaking hands with Albanese. There is no suggestion Albanese knew the man.
When Memeti was quizzed by this masthead about his proximity to suspected crime figures, he dismissed it as a byproduct of being a leader in an ethnic community with significant socio-economic challenges.
'I believe in trying to support people and rehabilitate people and give people second chances ... that's just been the way I am,' Memeti explains.
'I'm a figure that people trust. People want support … [and] come to me at their worst times.'
But his links to state and federal police targets has stoked concern inside law enforcement agencies, according to confidential sources who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity.
There is no suggestion that Memeti has any involvement in, or knowledge of, suspected organised crime activity, but confidential sources in law enforcement and the local Albanian community are querying whether Memeti's influence has been exploited by some in his community.
The concern is amplified by warnings circulated by Australia's peak criminal intelligence agency, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, that the Albanian mafia has strategically rorted Australia's migration system for more than a decade to build powerful criminal enterprises, especially in South Australia and Victoria.
ACIC has also warned that Balkans crime gangs have successfully corrupted officials in Albania.
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In interviews with this masthead, Memeti stressed he knew nothing about Albanian organised criminal activity in Australia. He said that in assisting men like Fari Lumanovski, he was simply fulfilling his role as 'the only Albanian slash politician/councillor that can actually help anybody in the community'.
The mayor said he had sought the help of federal Labor politicians to get 'a couple of old [Albanian] ladies' visas, but that this was merely an expected duty of local councillors.
Yet two others who have served with Memeti on council told this masthead they believed Memeti's activities, including his support of Fari Lumanovski and Dandenong Thunder, deserved scrutiny.
Fari Lumanovski was marked for deportation in 2018, after Home Affairs officials discovered he had lied about his criminal convictions in the Balkans.
According to tribunal records, Lumanovski's 'substantial' criminal track record in the corruption-plagued region included convictions for kidnapping and counterfeiting money.
Migration tribunal files reveal that Lumanovski also used a fake document to cover up his overseas criminal past and prison sentences, and had historical charges in Victoria for possessing an illegal handgun and almost two dozen packets of a prescribed medicine commonly used to produce narcotics.
Lumanovski's past didn't dissuade Memeti from using his status as a local government official to vouch for Lumanovski's character.
In a written character reference, Memeti said that he had known Lumanovski 'since 2014 through regular attendances at his cafe in Dandenong' and that Lumanovski's extended 'family were well known to him through his regular contact with the Albanian community'.
Despite being advised of Lumanovski's 'numerous criminal convictions', Memeti described him in a statement tendered to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2019 as a 'a person of generally good character' and 'a respected member of the Albanian community'.
Asked by this masthead about why he had backed Fari Lumanovski, Memeti downplayed his relationship with the businessman, saying he did not 'know him personally'.
'I know him only through the community,' Memeti said, explaining that he had offered to vouch for Fari because 'his wife was crying … and I did a reference for her'.
He said helping people was not only part of his nature but part of his job.
'Normally, you go to people and you ask them to support you, to vote for you. When time comes, sometimes they come to me with state issues, federal issues, local government issues,' Memeti said.
Memeti, an ethnic Albanian born in the North Macedonian village of Keshave, arrived in Australia aged two and bought his first poultry shop 17 years later, building an empire of almost two dozen chicken outlets and multiple investment properties.
His local government career began with his election to council in 2005 and elevation to mayor in 2010.
It's true that Memeti has helped others in trouble and his success as a businessman and politician in Dandenong, which has one of the highest Albanian populations in the country, has made him a magnet for those seeking help.
When Albanian Prparim Rustemovski was convicted for low-level cocaine trafficking in November 2019 and sentenced to two months' jail (which he had served on remand) and an 18-month community corrections order, the court heard how the mayor had 'provided a reference for you, in which he states that you worked hard for him' in a chicken shop previously owned by Memeti.
As for his connection with heroin and cocaine trafficker Stase Ognenov, Memeti explains it is no more than 'a tenant-landlord relationship'.
Memeti said that was likely why he spoke on the phone with Ognenov around the time he had arrived in NSW to pick up a package of cocaine in January 2024.
'He used to call me every now and then for different things [to do with the property Ognenov rented from him].' Memeti said he had spoken to Ognenov only once since he had been jailed in NSW.
Memeti said that that his 'very close' relationship with the Dandenong Thunder soccer club – which was founded by Albanian migrants in Dandenong and which formally endorsed Memeti's 2024 mayoral race – flowed from his work as mayor and community leader.
In October 2023, when state Labor minister Gabrielle Williams and MP Lee Tarlamis appeared at a media event to announce the $700,000 funding to upgrade of Thunder's main pitch, Memeti was pictured in local media reports with them alongside his son-in-law, Burim Muedenovski, who at the time was the club's vice president.
With Muedenovski in the picture was Ferdi Lumanovski, then-club president.
Memeti and his Labor colleagues didn't know it, but at the time of the photo, both Muedenovski and Ferdi were the focus of intense police attention due to the pair's association with figures suspected to be involved in Albanian organised crime.
One Albanian community insider has confided to this masthead that he told detectives he feared Dandenong Thunder had been infiltrated by Albanian crime figures.
In late 2024, police moved on both men. Ferdi's assets, including a Lamborghini Huracan, were seized by the police's proceeds of crime squad.
In a statement, Victoria Police confirmed that the seizure was 'part of an investigation into unexplained wealth', sparking an ongoing process that now requires Ferdi and his father, Fari, to convince the County Court they lawfully acquired 'three residential properties and two vehicles, a Lamborghini and a Mercedes Benz, worth at least $2.8 million'.
'As the matter is currently before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment further,' a police spokesperson said.
The Lumanovskis could not be reached for comment and there is no suggestion by this masthead they are guilty of any offence.
A few weeks later after the seizure action, police swooped on Muedenovski.
He was targeted as one of three men, including Memeti's nephew, Jeton, and Burim's brother, Enis, suspected of using inside information to bet on games in which Thunder lost against weaker rivals: the St Albans Saints in July 2024 and the Moreland City FC last August.
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Police have laid no match-fixing or betting charges, and there is no suggestion the trio are guilty of the suspected sports corruption being probed.
But during the raids, detectives made other discoveries: several small bags of cocaine and hydroponic cannabis crop inside Enis' home; and 29 vials of banned anabolic steroids in Burim's garage.
In late March, the two brothers pleaded guilty but escaped convictions. Burim is still facing charges laid by the Australian Border Force over allegedly smuggling 45,000 cigarettes into Australia.
Quizzed about the police targeting of his son-in-law, Memeti said he had little recent contact with him: 'You don't pick people who is your family, but you're very disappointed anyway.'
Memeti also revealed that, in the aftermath of the police raids on Thunder's headquarters, Burim and Ferdi had both left their official roles as the club's two top officials. (After the raid, Thunder released a statement saying it was 'deeply concerned by allegations connected to our club' and would 'fully co-operate with Victoria Police's investigation'.)
Memeti didn't respond to written questions about why he was pictured with accused Albanian criminal Emiljan Hamataj and federal Labor MP Cassandra Fernando, but Fernando's spokesperson said on Friday the photo was at a lunch 'at Cr Memeti's house during the 2024 Victorian local government elections' and that she 'does not recall meeting the man in question nor being introduced to him at the lunch or at any other time'.
A source aware of the lunch said it was held to thank volunteers who had helped with Memeti's re-election campaign.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of Fernardo or Memeti's other Labor colleagues, including federal MPs Dreyfus and Hill.
There is also no suggestion Albanese or any other politician knew the backgrounds of those who were part of the recent Albanian-Australian delegation to Canberra, including the suspected high-ranking Albanian mafia figure.
Dreyfus did not respond to specific questions about his dealings with Memeti, including whether Dreyfus' electorate office had provided assistance in specific migration matters, but said in a general statement that it was 'standard practice' for electorate offices to assist with visa matters.
Hill pointed to Memeti's long tenure in public office when asked about their dealings.
'Jim's been mayor of Greater Dandenong six times over 20 years and is well known and active across the entire community,' he said.
'Jim's dealings with me and my office over many years have always been entirely routine and focused on our community.'
When this masthead recently bumped into Memeti at Canberra airport, the six-time mayor insisted again that his brushes with those linked to suspected serious crime were incidental. As he had said in earlier interviews, Memeti vowed to keep helping people in need.
'That's just the way I am,' he said.