Tim Friend

BREAKING: @PeteZogoulas and I identified a black market money laundering business run by a Hezbollah supporter facing criminal charges - right next to the scam West Sydney NDIS business Sunny Days Care seen in our video. Alaa Al Fadheli runs ''Abrar Money Services'' alongside a black market tobacco shop called ''Cherry Convenience Tobacconist.'' His Facebook reveals posts memorialising Hezbollah terrorist leader Nasrallah: ''Congratulations on attaining martyrdom, O leader of the resistance.'' We sent an undercover mate to Alaa Al Fadheli's shop to buy black market Manchester cigarettes for $17.50. The ABC have described Manchesters as ''the most prolific illegal, and counterfeit, cigarette brand on the market, imported in vast quantities from the Middle East.'' They sell for roughly one-third of what you'd pay for a normal packet of cigarettes at Coles or a servo. So Mr. Al Fadheli has obviously been building up mountains of unbankable black market cash from his black market tobacco business, which he then launders through his cash transfer business. He seems to be running an illegal/unlicensed hawala business. The way this works is that if somebody from Lebanon or Iraq wants to transfer thousands in cash to a relative in Australia, they drop the cash off to a broker in Lebanon or Iraq who then passes a code to a corresponding person in Australia. The relative in Australia then goes to the tobacconist, gives the number, and receives the equivalent amount of cash from the shop’s cash pile. Abrar Money Services specialises in the transfer of Iraqi government and military pensions to refugees living in Australia. A comment on their Facebook page read: ''They're abroad, they're getting salaries in Iraq. What a great country!'' Indeed, what a great country. I love how every day we discover new schemes to systematically defraud us.