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Victoria Police declined to comment to The Age.
The tobacco war broke out after a series of longstanding Middle Eastern organised crime syndicates and bikie clubs attempted to set up a “commission” to control the illicit market and freeze out Hamad’s attempt to gain a foothold in the industry.
At the time, Hamad was finishing an eight-year sentence for drug trafficking. He was deported from Australia to his native Iraq in July 2023.
The 40-year-old had been plotting his return to the streets with his cousin and business associate Ahmed Al Hamza, who had been setting up a criminal network in Melbourne from a base in the Middle East since 2022.
“Kaz demanded a seat at the table — they said no. So Kaz said he would take the entire table,” a source said.
In just over two years, the Hamad syndicate has gone from the start-up to the biggest player in the market.
“He’s done very well. There’s very little competition now. He might hit the Fortune 500,” another underworld source said.
While police intelligence suggests the last arson linked to the tobacco war occurred on February 11, criminal infiltration of the tobacco market has been accelerating.
At a press conference following a series of arrests in late March, Detective Inspector Graham Banks said the number of shops Hamad had stood over was “likely to be in the hundreds”.
“I think it’s happening on a daily basis,” he said.
The Age reported last week that the “Kaz tax” had nearly doubled this year to a cash payment of $5000 a store per month as the syndicate forced terrified shop owners into submission and knocked out their rivals.
The sources say the Hamad syndicate is also enforcing a kind of “franchise” model where those who pay the tax are protected from competition opening or continuing in their designated area. Competing shops are ordered to close or be destroyed.
The wholesale price for a carton of cigarettes has risen from about $55 to $65 to $70 as the monopoly in the black market begins to bite, an industry source said.
Prices per packet – which now range from $12 to $15 depending on whether they are paid for in cash or by credit card – are also expected to rise.
The underworld sources say the recent “lull” in violence can be attributed, in part, to the execution-style murder of Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim who was gunned down in a Preston hotel car park in late January.
Before his death, the 32-year-old’s stake in the illicit tobacco market had been virtually exhausted by repeated firebombings by the Hamad syndicate. His murder has been taken as a warning.
“The message couldn’t be clearer – they don’t forgive, and they’re never gonna forget. The game’s changed and Kaz isn’t ever gonna stop going for control or punishing those who cross him,” an underworld source said.
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Hamad’s growing monopolisation of the illegal tobacco industry has been met by a new push by the specialist Lunar Taskforce to tamp down his control.
In a two-week period in late March, Lunar arrested and charged nearly 20 suspected Hamad crew members and associates in relation to a string of extortions of tobacco shops and fires.
Banks has previously said the war was reaching a “turning point”, in part because of new co-operation that police were receiving from shop owners and the suggestion that informers had been cultivated inside the gang.
“Pleasingly, we’re now starting to see members of the public, as well as members of the Hamad syndicate, start to co-operate with the police,” he said at a press conference.
“While that co-operation is not yet at the level we would like to see, it is no doubt a significant turning point in this significant investigation into what is a very serious and organised crime group.”
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Other recent breakthroughs have been intelligence tying the tobacco war to the death of innocent bystander Katie Tangey in January, including the release of a “face fit” image of the suspect, and the charging of one of the men suspected of being responsible for the murder of tobacco player and underworld figure Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, known as “Afghan Ali”.
Nearly 130 people have been arrested by Lunar since the start of the tobacco war, and more than $50 million worth of cigarettes, loose tobacco and vapes have been seized.
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