COCAINE KILLERS

A $200 MILLION-a-year cocaine cartel allegedly responsible for the murder
of crime figure Alphonse Gangitano is operating in Melbourne.

A Herald Sun INSIGHT investigation has found the cartel has increased
cocaine trade in Victoria fivefold in the past three years.

Key sources have told the Herald Sun the cartel ordered the murder of
Gangitano and his alleged crime associate, Vincenzo Mannella.

Gangitano was allegedly a "captain" of the cartel run by top-level members
of the Melbourne business establishment.

And police have admitted publicly for the first time they believe they know
the identity of Gangitano's killer.

The head of the homicide squad investigation of the Gangitano case, Insp.
Dave Reid, said: "We believe we know who has done that crime."

A highly placed crime source said: "There are two heads of the cartel in
Melbourne.

"They never see the cocaine, they just see the profits."

Some of Australia's most violent criminal gangs are also involved in the
cartel, police said.

The cartel's "captains and lieutenants" have direct links with their
counterparts in the Sydney cocaine cartel, which controls the city's sex
trade.

Highly placed crime sources said the cartel ordered Gangitano's murder.

Gangitano was gunned down because "he was talking too much", the sources said.

"Alphonse was using too much cocaine and was talking about who was
involved. He had to go," a key dealer said.

Mannella was gunned down at his North Fitzroy home last month, allegedly
under the orders of the cartel for his connection to Gangitano.

Insp. Reid said police believed they knew who gunned down Gangitano in his
Templestowe home in January last year.

"He doesn't have any direct contact to a cocaine cartel at this stage,
however, that is to say we don't have any evidence of a direct connection,"
he said.

"There are suggestions, however, he was involved in the drug trade."

The cartel has also started to take some of the city's heroin trade.

A national survey found last year that six out of 10 heroin users had
injected cocaine in the previous six months.

Interviews with police, dealers, users and medical experts have lifted the
lid for the first time on Melbourne's spiralling cocaine trade.

The INSIGHT investigation further found:

THERE had been a 200per cent increase in the amount of cocaine coming into
Melbourne in the past three years.

THE number of cocaine dealers in Melbourne had risen fivefold in the past
three years.

MELBOURNE'S ports have become a major arrival point for cocaine.

THE price of cocaine has fallen by up to 50 per cent in Melbourne from $400
a gram in 1983 to $200-$250.

COCAINE user remains generally confined to high-income earners.

Cocaine dealers said up to $4million worth of cocaine a week was sold in
Melbourne.

"That has led to Melbourne's ports being a major arrival point for
cocaine," one said.

Another dealer said this led to a fivefold increase in the number of
cocaine dealers in Melbourne in the past three years.

"These are people in the business establishment of Melbourne. Lawyers,
bankers and doctors. People who you would walk past on the street," he said.

The head of the drug squad, Det. Chief Insp. John McKoy, denied there was a
cocaine cartel in Melbourne.

In 1997, Det. Chief Insp. McKoy said Australia had been flooded with
cocaine, which was now regularly available throughout Melbourne.

He said the Melbourne cocaine trade was run by some of Australia's most
vicious crime gangs.

He said the December 1998 seizure of 225kg of cocaine in NSW had caused a
cocaine drought in Melbourne.

"Nevertheless, there is always the potential for a big shipment to arrive
and that drought becomes a flood," he said.

"We don't expect the drought to last."

But the cocaine "drought" has led to a spate of violent attacks on cocaine
dealers who each distribute about 1kg a week, valued at about $80,000.

Many of these lower-level dealers are in advertising, medical, banking and
legal professions.

"The higher-level dealers are simply robbing the lower-level dealers of the
money they made before the drought came," a dealer said.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations said cocaine use in
Melbourne had "skyrocketed in the past three years".