Café owner’s tobacco smuggling ring dragged down

A Melbourne shisha cafe owner’s plot to smuggle more than three tonnes of tobacco worth $2.75 million has been snuffed out.

The café, in the Northern suburb of Preston was owned by Majid Jabal, who will now spend time behind bars and not the bar.

Jabal will spend 15 months in jail for the indiscretion of importing tobacco with the intention of defrauding the revenue.

Melbourne’s County Court heard Jabal had plotted to bring in the tobaccovia the Melbourne docks. Of course, anyone who has ever watched Border Patrol knows, how difficult it is to blow smoke in our customs officers’ faces.

Australian Border Force officers seized 3245kg of ‘Al Fakher’ molasses tobacco, which was concealed behind a fake wall after examining and X-raying the container.

The tobacco had a duty rate of $771.60 a kilo and was worth $2,754,226 to the Commonwealth.

Investigators linked the haul to Amsterdam Import via emails, business records and CCTV seized from Jabal.

Officers also seized multiple open and partially used Al-Fakher packets at the already abandoned business.

The business shut its doors in 2018 under mysterious circumstances, with Jabal denying ownership of the venue.

Whilst initially pleading not guilty, claiming he had agreed to share of the cost importing glass which he had “sourced from a friend in the United Arab Emirates”, Jabal changed his tune earlier this year, three years after the seizure.

Jabal has a criminal history since arriving in Melbourne after feeling Iraq. He has priors for drug possession and obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

“The potential rewards for engaging in offending of this kind may be great and the criminality can often be difficult to detect,” Judge Michael O’Connell said.

“Accordingly, significant penalties apply because of the need to provide a real disincentive to others tempted to offend in this way …

“You were the principal in a sophisticated criminal enterprise to evade $2.75 million in duties and taxes.

“It is true that there is no direct evidence as to what you stood to gain beyond the evasion of those taxes, but it can be readily inferred that you calculated that the risk you took in committing this offence was worth your while.”