Abe Saffron's life as a charismatic crook

Writer-director Hugh Piper has more than a grudging regard for the late, largely unlamented Abe Saffron.

For three decades the son of Polish immigrants thrived as the most successful kingpin of the Australian underworld, amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune in cash, jewellery and real estate and left an enduring model for future organised criminals.

The tale of the charismatic crook is set to be retold in Mr Sin: The Abe Saffron Story on ABC-TV next Thursday night, June 24.

As a tale of power, greed and corruption this one doesn’t need any dramatic embellishments: there is enough sex, violence and dirty deeds to impress even the most jaded Underbelly tragic.

Piper has interviewed writers, politicians, ex-police and corruption investigators who variously describe Saffron as ‘‘vile, amoral and absolutely corrupt’’ and a figure ‘‘named by three separate Royal Commissions as the number one Mr Big of Australian crime’’.

At the heart of this story sits a street-wise charmer who knew how to take care of business. ‘‘Abe used lawyers and accountants to set up businesses that fronted his illegal gambling, sex and liquor empire,’’ Piper says. ‘‘He turned the profits from his nefarious activities into real estate which allowed him to reign as the boss of Kings Cross while maintaining the veneer of respectability.’’

To protect his empire Saffron corrupted or blackmailed anyone he needed including the disgraced NSW Premier Sir Robert Askin, judges, and that constant of organised crime, the NSW Police Force, starting with its commissioner.

As Saffron’s son Alan attests, his father became the bagman for Askin and the police commissioner at a time when illegal gambling, prostitution and sly grog could not exist without protection from above.

From where did he lift this game plan?

Las Vegas is the best guess. At the age of 25 he had already purchased Sydney’s most glamorous nightclub, the Roosevelt, and was looking for ideas to expand.

Outwardly, Abe Saffron was an impresario with an eye for the glitz and glamour of US-style entertainment. During the 1950s, via promoter Lee Gordon, he enticed a succession of stars including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Sammy Davis Jnr to tour Down Under and perform in the chain of nightclubs he was opening in major cities.

Negotiations with their managers had taken him to Las Vegas where he was wined and dined and doubtlessly influenced by the Gambino mafia family, experts at the protection model.

By then, both the FBI, under the ruthless stewardship of its director J. Edgar Hoover, and the mafia had perfected the art of exerting influence via secretly photographing and compiling dossiers on the sexual peccadilloes of politicians, public officials and influential citizens. Saffron imported the practice to Australia.

Saffron certainly understood weakness of the flesh. By any definition he was probably a sex addict.

‘‘And he wasn’t interested in therapy,’’ notes Piper wryly.

Surrounded as he was by a legion of young women who stripped, danced and performed in his collection of nightclubs, the boss was never short of supply.

‘‘If rooting was an Olympic sport,’’ one of the film’s contributors observes, ‘‘Abe would have been a gold medallist.’’

It didn’t matter that he was married. Saffron made it clear to his long-suffering wife Doreen that he would spend three nights a week on the family front; the other four were for him to take care of business, in whatever form.

Piper: ‘‘His son and grandson told me how he would carry a bag of diamonds and whenever he wanted to impress somebody, he would pull it out and show them. If it was a woman, he would place a diamond in her hand. It usually worked.’’

No matter how wild his private life, Abe remained untouchable, as proven when the victim of an alleged assault accused him of an especially nasty (and, at the time, illegal) sex act during an orgy at one of his premises. The scandal made for salacious reading in the tabloid press but, typically, the nightclub owner remained beyond reach.

Jim Anderson, a tough Scot who became Saffron’s strong arm and would ultimately betray him to the authorities for tax evasion, shot a rival to death in one of Saffron’s clubs in front of witnesses. The case was no-billed. No crime figure, it seemed, had Saffron’s pull.

As investigative journalist Bob Bottom says on film: ‘‘When others were dropping like nine pins, Abe sailed through.’’

Frank Walker, attorney general in the Wran Labor government, testifies: ‘‘Abe owned all the police in Kings Cross.’’

Among those on the Saffron payroll was Fred Krahe, a vicious thug, thief, standover merchant, organised crime figure and, probably murderer. When not up to his eyeballs in criminal activity he was serving as a senior detective. In a long line of corrupt coppers stretching back to the Rum Corps, Krahe was as bad as it gets. Everybody was afraid of him.

Darcy Dugan was a frail, broken old man when finally let out of jail in the late 1980s. This writer interviewed Dugan on his release. Although Krahe had died in 1981, Australia’s one-time most wanted crim showed fear at the very mention of the corrupt copper’s name. The old crim believed that, among other stunts, the bent detective not only organised one of the most lucrative armoured car heists in Australian criminal history, but was the leader of the so-called Toe-cutter Gang which tortured or murdered the robbers for their cuts of the proceeds.

The disappearance of anti-development activist and community newspaper publisher Juanita Nielsen remains one of the state’s most enduring mysteries. Nielsen actively opposed demolition of Victoria Street terraces near Kings Cross to make way for high-rise development.

The documentary explores Saffron’s ties to developers and the possibility that Nielsen was killed at one of his establishments. It also probes the conflicting theory that her alleged possession of Saffron’s dossier of incriminating photos of powerful figures led to her murder. Some believe Krahe was involved in her disappearance.

In 1979, when seven people, including six children, died in the Luna Park ghost train fire, suspicion turned to Saffron and associates. While the official findings pointed to an accidental ignition, doubt remained. As Frank Walker reports: ‘‘There was clear evidence Saffron wanted to take over the park.’’

Putting the Luna Park fire and Nielsen mystery aside, anecdotal evidence suggests Saffron may have been directly or indirectly involved in as many as five murders.

There was little doubt he would resort to brutal measures to protect his empire. Yet, was he not simply a product of government policy on prohibition?

Piper: ‘‘There would be plenty who would say that he was only giving people access to what they wanted – sex, booze, casinos and entertainment.’’

The demand was definitely there. At the height of his power Saffron had interests in an estimated 100 brothels and 50 nightclubs throughout Australia.

When Neville Wran legalised those activities in NSW, many crims who had thrived on prohibition went out of business. In their wake, drugs became the major prohibited item and ushered in a new era of corruption. Saffron was definitely in the mix, as realised by South Australia attorney general Peter Duncan’s investigation of police corrupted by heroin traffickers.

The Stewart Royal Commission (1981-83) into the drug trade turned up a trail of bribery, corruption, prostitution, fraud, and supply and distribution of narcotics leading to the front door of the Saffron empire.

Yet, the master crim would do no time for these deeds. Instead, like Al Capone, the authorities prosecuted and imprisoned him for tax evasion.

Saffron’s will bequeathed $1million each to his eight grandchildren out of a fortune estimated at somewhere between $25million and $100million.

The man the tabloids had tagged as Mr Sin spent his last days surrounded by his loving family.

Mr Sin screens on ABC1 at

9.25pm on Thursday, June 24.