Respect runs deep among the Calabrians who man the stalls at Melbourne’s Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable market.
Even when police come calling, as in the early 1990s when market identities began turning up dead, deference is paid to those with influence. In 1992, when homicide detectives asked the fruitshop owner Antonio Madafferi what he thought of Liborio Benvenuto, the undisputed Mafia godfather of Melbourne, he replied: “A very good man. Very honest and he was respected everywhere.” Madafferi also impressed upon the interviewing detectives that he, too, was a man of influence. “I am a man who is very respected at the market.” Bruce Billson, the Liberal MP, also thinks Madafferi is a decent chap, although his interaction with the Calabrian-born greengrocer is limited to fund-raising events. “I met him at functions. He seems a nice guy,” Billson says. Some, though, hold a different view of Madafferi. In the early 1990s, Madafferi was twice named as a suspected hitman (allegations he denied and which were never corroborated) at the inquests into the murders of two greengrocers. In 1998 a senior officer from Victoria Police’s organised crime squad wrote in a report that Antonio Madafferi was “involved in a substantial number of crimes, including murder, gunshot wounding and arson”. The report was aired in 2000 at a court hearing involving Antonio’s brother, Francesco, who was fighting a protracted battle with the Immigration Department over his impending deportation.
The police report, later dismissed by an Administrative Appeals Tribunal judge on the basis that it contained information from unnamed and possibly unreliable police informers, also alleged that both Antonio and Francesco belonged to a “crime family involved in blackmail, extortion and murder”. The report also stated that: “If Francesco is allowed to remain in Australia, he will continue to carry out acts of violence on behalf of an organised criminal syndicate.”