A producer for YouTube channel FriendlyJordies says he feared for his safety after a Four Corners reporter allegedly broadcast threats made by a notorious organized crime family.
Kristo Langker, who works with FriendlyJordies creator Jordan Shanks, says he received the warnings from ABC investigative journalist Mahmood Fazal.
Fazal has strongly denied doing anything wrong, and ABC – which describes his work as “extremely challenging, impactful and important public interest journalism – defends its reporting.
The Walkley Award winner, 33, insists all the warnings made by the crime family were aimed at him and it was his life that was in danger.
Langker was so concerned about the situation that the 23-year-old made a statement to the New South Wales Police Organized Crime Squad seen by Daily Mail Australia.
According to that statement, Langker claims he told Fazal in a telephone conversation: “You’re a Four Corners journalist.” You have to decide what you are.
“You’re not one of them.”
A producer for YouTube channel FriendlyJordies says he feared for his safety after Four Corners reporter Mahmood Fazal allegedly broadcast threats made by a notorious organized crime family. Fazal is pictured working for the ABC program
Fazal is a former motorcyclist who was once sergeant-at-arms for a chapter of the Mongols and has since dedicated himself to telling stories about crime, violence, prison and terrorism.
He was appointed a permanent member of Four Corners’ investigative team of reporters alongside journalists including Louise Milligan, Mark Willacy and Angus Grigg last August.
Fazal fronted the Four Corners episodes Cocaine Nation in June 2023 and Meth Highway in April this year, both of which explored the trade and use of illegal drugs.
Those investigations relied heavily on criminal contacts who Fazal said were willing to talk to him because he was once part of their world.
Fazal’s family fled Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the late 1980s and settled in Victoria, where as a young man he fell into a life of crime and drugs.
He once explained in an article written for Walkley magazine in May 2018 how his membership in the Mongols and the gang’s “strict meth policy” helped him achieve sobriety.
“I naturally acclimated to violence and respected the penal code, where the word is everything,” he wrote.
Kristo Langker, who works with FriendlyJordies creator Jordan Shanks, says warnings he received from ABC investigative journalist Mahmood Fazal made him fear for his safety. Fazal appears in the photo when he was a Mongolian.
Langker became involved with Fazal through the production of a video that was uploaded to the FriendlyJordies channel in August 2022.
That video used photographs of a famous rapper and other alleged associates of a crime family that had first appeared in a Rolling Stone article written by Fazal a year earlier.
In Langker’s statement to police, he claimed that Fazal had told him over lunch in late August or early September 2022 that he was receiving threats over the video.
Fazal said he had been meeting with ABC management to arrange police protection for him “due to (the crime family’s) alleged involvement,” Langker told detectives on Jan. 19.
“Mahmood (allegedly) said words like, ‘I was talking to people who are involved in organized crime,’ and ‘You have to watch your back,'” Langker said in his statement.
Fazal also reportedly said: “Your name is on the lips of serious people”, “I am terrified” and “I am seriously concerned for my safety”.
Kristo Langker was so concerned about threats allegedly conveyed to him by Mahmood Fazal that he made a statement to the New South Wales Police Organized Crime Team. Langker is pictured on the right
Langker told police that Fazal had asked him on January 11 this year to remove the FriendlyJordies video “as there were people threatening his life”.
“He said words to the effect that ‘if the video wasn’t released, something very bad could happen to himself,'” Langker told police. “He made it very clear that Jordan and I were in danger, too.”
Langker said he met Fazal later that day outside a lawyer’s office in Sydney’s central business district, where Fazal allegedly again pleaded for the video to be taken down.
On January 17, Langker had an eight-minute telephone conversation with Fazal.
“Mahmood said, ‘I don’t understand why you are making this about yourself. “I’m the one being threatened,” Langker said in his police statement.
‘Mahmood said: “I had a guy who just got out of prison for attempted murder, basically tell me what to do. I’m the one being threatened here, mate, not you.”
Fazal’s family fled Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the late 1980s and settled in Victoria, where as a young man he fell into a life of crime and drugs. Fazal is portrayed as a Mongolian.
Langker told police that Fazal said he had met face to face with one of the men making the alleged threats and was warned to watch his back.
“I said, ‘Why were you hanging out with them?'” Langker said.
‘He said: “I wasn’t there, they called me to a meeting.”
“I said, ‘You’re a Four Corners journalist and you have to decide what you are. You are not one of them. Why would you do that?”.
In a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald, which first reported the alleged threats, Fazal accused the publication of trying to stereotype him because of his ethnicity.
“The connections you are trying to make between me and the events are serious and I find them deeply offensive,” he told the publication.
‘I am concerned that it appears that you have relied on the ethnic origin of the people you are referring to to imply illegal conduct on my part. This seems to be a case of trying to stereotype me.
‘If you have any credible information to suggest that I have engaged in any illegal conduct (which I have not), I suggest that you provide that information to the police so that they can address it appropriately rather than publishing unproven allegations in the newspaper. .’
Fazal (left) fronted the Four Corners episodes Cocaine Nation in June 2023 and Meth Highway in April this year, both of which explored the trade and use of illegal drugs.
Daily Mail Australia attempted to contact Fazal, but an ABC spokeswoman said she understood he did not wish to comment further.
“Mahmood Fazal does extremely challenging, impactful and important public interest journalism for the ABC and the ABC stands by his reporting,” he said.
‘For obvious reasons, the ABC will not comment on threats to the safety of our employees, the measures we take for their safety or any dealings we may have with the police.
“Mahmood says he informed his law enforcement contacts about this situation every step of the way.”
NSW Police told the Herald their investigation into Langker’s reported threats had stalled because Fazal was reluctant to make a statement.
The FriendlyJordies video was removed in February.
Fazal won the Walkley Foundation’s 2020 Australian Media Diversity Award for the podcast No Gangsters in Paradise, which examined the gang war between the Darwiche and Razzak families in Sydney in the early 2000s.
His writing has previously appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, VICE, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and Rolling Stone.