UNDERBELLY OF POLITICS

That Mafia-related name Madafferi is back in the new again.  The Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, has announced he will re-open investigations into claims that there was a connection between donations to the Liberal Party and the granting of an Australian visa to one Francesco Madafferi who was overdue to be deported. These allegations have been aired several times in The Age in recent months.

The then Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone overturned advice from her department and the decision of her predecessor Philip Ruddock. Ruddock ordered Madafferi deported because he was an illegal immigrant and still had four years to serve of a jail sentence in Italy.

When questioned about her decision Vanstone, now Ambassador to Italy, said she did so on ‘humanitarian’ and mental health grounds.

Now I have commented before on this unsavoury, slippery, crook who has made an art form out of beating the legal system. About seven years ago I even gave the then Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, some public advice.

I said to him: ‘Soon you will get a letter from a lawyer named Joe Acquaro. He will plead the case of an illegal immigrant who has overstayed his time. He will talk about changed circumstances for his client.  He will tell you he is an earnest, hard-working family man. He will tell you he has four young children all born here in Australia. He will tell you he has a loving loyal wife. And he has a respectable job as a greengrocer. And he will plead with you not to allow this man to be deported back to Italy.

He may even tug on your heart strings by telling you that this man’s youngest bambino has just celebrated his first birthday in this wonderful country of ours. His name is Francesco Madafferi. I am sure you know that name well.

When you get this letter, Mr Ruddock, this is my suggestion. Tear it up. If you can resist spitting on it. Because the man in question is a thug, a user, a calculating crim who lied to get into this country and has used every trick in the book – including turning the wife he married here into a baby factory to stay here.

Both Madafferi and his wife have admitted they thought the marriage was his ticket to freedom.

I shouldn’t have to tell you, Mr. Ruddock, that he came here on a six-months tourist’s visa in 1989. He stayed and he stayed and he stayed and he wasn’t sprung until the mid-1990s.

And when the Immigration department started doing some checks they discovered he forgot to tell the Australian authorities in his visa application that he had convictions for extortion and stabbings and drug offences in Italy and hadn’t completed his jail sentences.

Other members of his family also had criminal connections. Why should we be surprised by all of this – Madafferi was born in Robert Trimbole country, Calabria. Madafferi, as rotten as any fruit you may find at the Victoria markets, was clever. He knew his away around the courts.

His lawyers tried all sorts of tricks. The fact that he had fled Italy with time owing for his crimes. Gumba. No big deal. By now, the time for those sentences had elapsed.

Madafferi would appear at appeal hearings with wife and kids in tow. And the court appearances went on and on until an AAT deputy president ruled that in the interests of his children  Madafferi should not be refused a visa on grounds of poor character. Remembering of course that none of these children were born when Madafferi first broke our laws.

 This cunning piece of human flotsam has ducked and weaved and played this country and our laws and our courts the way a mafia don’s lawyers would.’

Over the years I’ve received insulting e-mails from Madafferi supporters.
Even received some from Rome. And the local Italian newspaper hoed in. I accepted the criticism that not all Calabrians are crooks, a la the infamous Robert Trimbole and the so-called Honoured Society, but I said and still say per capita they are way over the limit.

Wrongly, in my view, 3AW broadcast an apology to the Calabrian community some years ago which I refused to read on air.

Federal Liberal MP Jason Woods said, having known and dealt with the Madafferis as a Victorian policeman, he wouldn’t take any donations from Madafferi supporters.

‘Should he have been thrown out of the country? The answer is yes.’

We await further developments. That little town of Plati must be a helluva slime breeding ground.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009