A mob figure regarded as Brisbane’s Tony Soprano has died aged 80.
Gerardo Bellino, who was imprisoned following the Fitzgerald investigation of crime and police corruption, ran a multimillion-dollar network of illegal brothels and gambling dens.
Known as Gerry, he was a member of the Bellino family of immigrants who came to Australia from Sicily in the 1940s when he was nine.
The colorful entrepreneur eventually owned several striptease clubs, a box-making business, and worked as a real estate speculator.
Along with his business partner Vittorio ‘Vic’ Conte, he was jailed for nearly seven years after being convicted of paying bribes worth $17,000 a month to police officers.
Bellino paid for the protection of his vice rackets in the Valley to corrupt cops who pocketed hundreds of “Uncle Gerry.”
He was also associated with growing giant cannabis crops.
Bellino died of cancer on March 1 and will say goodbye next week at a service at Holy Spirit Church, New Farm.
Gerry Bellino, who ran a multimillion-dollar network of illegal brothels and gambling dens in Brisbane’s fringes of Fortitude Valley, has died aged 80.
One of the illegal brothels is run in the then seamy suburb of The Valley. including Bellino’s Bubbles Bath House and other places of prostitution
Gerry Bellino (left), who once ran illegal casinos, brothels and strip clubs (right) in Brisbane’s slum, The Valley, has died of cancer aged 80
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bellino operated some of Fortitude Valley’s best-known venues, including the World by Night, an infamous strip club with a brothel upstairs, The Beat, and Bubbles Bath House, which operated an illegal gaming room.
Bubbles has since reopened in the same location as a legitimate business, Les Bubbles Steakhouse, with a bar in the basement to highlight its “sordid history.”
Bellino made huge amounts of money from prostitution and gambling.
Fortitude Valley was a hotbed of illegal gambling, prostitution and crime, which became the subject of the Fitzgerald investigation into police corruption
Brothels and illegal casinos clustered in the valley along a sex strip controlled by the mafia and protected by corrupt police
He was the brother of the more prominent Tony Bellino, a casino operator who denied knowing anything about illegal prostitution before his death last year.
Tony Bellino, who opened iconic hot spot The Roxy in Fortitude Valley in the 1980s, was named in the terms of the Fitzgerald Inquiry but was never charged and denied any wrongdoing.
The investigation was sparked by reporter Phil Dickie’s investigation of high-level police corruption, illegal prostitution and gambling in Brisbane in the late 1980s, and was followed by Chris Masters’ Four Corners program, The Moonlight State.
Gerry Bellino freely admitted to the investigation that he owned buildings that housed illegal gambling dens and Bubbles Bath House, but denied being involved in prostitution.
The Fitzgerald Inquiry, which began when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was the Premier of Queensland, awarded damages to witnesses, resulting in allegations of corruption against the State Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis.
Significant political damage caused Bjelke-Petersen to resign as Prime Minister, and when Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald submitted his report in 1989, high-profile politicians were charged with crimes.
Bjelke-Petersen himself was tried for corruption and perjury, but a jury could not agree on a verdict.
Sir Terence Lewis was charged with corruption, convicted and stripped of his knighthood.
In December 1989, the ALP won Queensland’s first election since 1957, with Wayne Goss elected leader.