Mick Gatto sues Sydney silk claiming he likened him to Tony Soprano

Underworld identity Mick Gatto has launched defamation proceedings against Sydney barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, accusing the high-profile corruption-buster of branding him a “murderous member of the mafia”.

In a statement of claim filed in the NSW Supreme Court, Gatto’s lawyers allege a segment broadcast on Nine’s 60 Minutes about the CFMEU, which included an interview with Watson, conveys a series of defamatory claims about him.

Gatto is suing Watson personally for damages, rather than the network owned by Nine Entertainment, which also owns this masthead.

The lawsuit was filed days before the one-year limitation period for bringing a defamation suit was due to expire.

During the 60 Minutes segment, aired on March 16 last year, Watson spoke about his examination of the CFMEU to The Age and Herald investigative journalist Nick McKenzie.

Watson said during the interview: “When I started conducting this inquiry, it felt to me like I was watching an episode of The Sopranos.”

Gatto’s lawyers allege some viewers would have understood the segment to convey the false and defamatory claim that Gatto is a “murderous member of the mafia” because of the reference to The Sopranos, which depicts a fictional Italian-American mafia family.

Gatto was referred to during the broadcast but was not mentioned in this part of the interview.

Asked by McKenzie during the interview where Gatto “sit[s] in terms of the construction sector”, Watson replied: “Well, he’s right at the top. He’s the master. Now, everything flows from him.

“He sits at the centre of the web. This web is spreading all over the construction industry in Victoria.”

Gatto’s lawyers allege the broadcast conveyed 10 defamatory claims about him, including that he “is responsible for the corruption and serious criminal conduct that has spread within the CFMEU” and “uses extreme violence and intimidation to obtain money from people within the construction industry”.

In 2024, the federal government appointed an administrator, Mark Irving, KC, for up to five years to the construction and general division of the CFMEU.

Irving has wide powers, including to expel members or office holders of the union and undertake investigations into current and past practices.

The then-CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith appointed Watson in 2024 to “investigate alleged criminal wrongdoing raised in public reporting”.

Separately, Watson was appointed by Irving to investigate violence in the Queensland operations of the CFMEU as part of a state commission of inquiry into the union.

A previous defamation case brought by Gatto was not a success. The underworld figure sued the ABC over a 2019 article on its website under the headline “Gangland figure Mick Gatto threatened to kill police Informer 3838, court told”.

Gatto claimed the article made him out to be “a hit man, a murderer or someone who has plotted or arranged the murder of others”.

In 2021, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Andrew Keogh ruled in the ABC’s favour, finding none of the alleged meanings was conveyed by the article. Lawyers for the national broadcaster argued the report was based fairly and accurately on court proceedings.

Gatto lost a subsequent appeal and was ordered to pay the ABC’s costs.

After the High Court refused him special leave to appeal, Gatto lashed out at the justice system, telling The Age in November 2022: “The press can say whatever they like and get away with it. The system is corrupt as far as I’m concerned.”

Gatto was represented in his unsuccessful defamation case by Melbourne lawyer Pat Lennon, who has since surrendered his practising certificate and is currently facing criminal charges. Lennon and his co-accused, colourful jockey Danny Nikolic, are alleged to have been involved in a bungled robbery from a Carlton property in January 2024.

Gatto has a tattoo on his chest of prominent Melbourne silk Robert Richter. After a seven-week trial in 2005, Richter was successful in persuading a jury that Gatto’s 2004 shooting of underworld hitman Andrew Veniamin in a Carlton restaurant was self-defence, not murder.

For years, Domenico “Mick” Gatto, 70, has been one of Melbourne’s best-known underworld characters. The former boxer and ex-bankrupt who did a stint in prison years ago has become better known in more recent times as a debt collector and “mediator”.

When he appeared before the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry in 2002, Gatto angrily denied he was a standover man.

“I’m not a standover man. I’m not a man of ill repute. Fair enough I’ve got a chequered past ... but I paid for ... whatever I have done wrong,” he told the commission.

His 2009 autobiography claims to be “the story of a kid with a passion for boxing, the illegal gambling rackets that brought huge wealth to so few and ruin to so many, and it is the story of Australia’s very own violent underworld. No book will offer a more brutally honest insider’s account of the crime scene in Australia than I, Mick Gatto.”

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