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The Comanchero outlaw bikie gang is suspected of seeking to build a construction empire in Victoria via union-backed front companies and by infiltrating CFMEU ranks, according to law enforcement intelligence aired at a Queensland inquiry.
On Wednesday morning, counsel assisting the Queensland Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU, Eddy Gisonda KC, described how law enforcement agencies had in 2024 gathered intelligence, including extensive phone data, indicating the Comancheros had launched a concerted effort to create a building industry empire in Victoria and Queensland.
Gisonda also tabled CFMEU-backed enterprise bargaining agreements allegedly secured by Comanchero-linked building firms in Victoria, including an EBA signed off by the CFMEU administration last month.
The role of the CFMEU administration’s Victorian chief, Matt McGowan, in signing off on an EBA for the bikie-linked firm Form Solutions in July raises fresh questions about the absence of checks and balances applied by the Labor-backed administration.
A separate investigation by The Age has established that basic due diligence should have revealed to the administration that Form Solutions had business links to the Comancheros and had also been previously refused a licence to operate by Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority.
Between 2023 and 2025, Form Solutions was directed by the wife of former Comancheros president Bemir Saracevic.
There is no suggestion that McGowan knew of the firm’s bikie links, just as there is no suggestion the Victorian secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union knew that an EBA he signed off on last year involved another company with Comanchero links.
That firm is FSA Kerbs and Placement Pty Ltd. The signing of its EBA was witnessed by Saracevic’s wife as well as Comanchero gang affiliate Krstomir Bjelogrlic in April 2025. It is unclear how much work, if any, FSA did in Victoria.
However, the revelations raise serious questions about why the CFMEU administration, which is responsible for cleaning up the union, is apparently failing to undertake proper background checks when agreeing to EBAs that give the union’s stamp of approval for a company to operate on major projects.
The AWU is facing similar questions, although its secretary Ronnie Hayden – who signed off on the Comanchero-linked EBA in 2025 – has previously called for more government intervention to ensure unions are not unwittingly supporting underworld-linked figures. CFMEU administrator Michael Crosby issued similar calls as recently as July.
The alleged bikie involvement in the construction sector has become a focus of the Queensland inquiry after it was revealed on Tuesday that leading Australian infrastructure firm BMD was implicated in a suspected bikie stand-over plot.
It allegedly involved Melbourne Comanchero enforcers travelling to Brisbane in June 2024 to threaten to burn down the house and kill the children of a CFMEU activist on a BMD site.
A blow-by-blow account of the alleged stand-over plot was unveiled during the grilling of BMD executive Robert Pickard on Tuesday afternoon. It allegedly involved Saracevic, Bjelogrlic and a third suspected Comanchero gang member.
Months before the suspected stand-over, BMD had hired security company Host to counter the CFMEU’s increasingly aggressive tactics on the Centenary Bridge project.
BMD is working on major state and federally backed projects, including Victoria’s Big Build and the new international airport in Western Sydney.
On Wednesday, Pickard denied knowing about the involvement of the bikies in the alleged June 2024 stand-over on the federal and Queensland government-funded $350 million bridge project in Brisbane.
But the commission heard evidence that Host had recruited three feared Melbourne Comanchero identities to confront a CFMEU activist as he worked his crane shift on June 5, 2024.
The revelations at the Queensland inquiry give Australians a taste of what is likely to be unveiled at the promised and upcoming Victorian royal commission. Half of the key subjects at Tuesday’s hearing in Brisbane were from Melbourne and are variously entrenched in both Victoria’s underworld and its building sector.
The hearing has also placed immense scrutiny on BMD, which is currently working on Victoria’s Eastern Freeway upgrade. In July, the Crisafulli government in Queensland announced that BMD had won the contract to undertake early works for the new Brisbane Stadium Olympics venue.
Asked by this masthead about the evidence heard at the commission suggesting BMD associated with underworld-linked figures in the alleged Centenary Bridge stand-over incident and whether BMD’s internal investigation into the matter was adequate, the company’s spokesperson said on Wednesday: “BMD has additional representatives to appear over the coming days and it would be premature for us to comment.”
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.From our partners
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