A MELBOURNE man was in court on Thursday (2 March) after allegedly importing 24 kilograms of cocaine in an airfreight consignment of water pumps.
The St Kilda man, 31, was arrested following an Australian Border Force detection of illicit drugs concealed within the consignment imported into Melbourne from Greece.
Police estimate the 24 kilograms of cocaine to have a “street value” of more than $10 million.
AFP investigators, with assistance from Victoria Police’s VIPER Taskforce, conducted a controlled delivery to an address in Melbourne and raided a St Kilda residence, where the man was arrested.
Police took the man to the AFP Southern Command Headquarters in Melbourne where he was charged with three crimes relating to smuggling a commercial quantity of illicit drugs and dealing with identification information with the intention to commit an offence.
The maximum penalty for the drug offences is life imprisonment and five years’ imprisonment for dealing in identification information.
AFP Detective Superintendent Anthony Hall said, “Part of the AFP strategy to combat transnational serious and organised crime is to target their business model and confiscate any assets the criminal syndicates acquire through profiting from importing illicit drugs into Australia. Those assets represent the abhorrent harm and misery they inflict on the Australian community.”
ABF Superintendent Tori Rosemond praised the work of ABF officers who detected the attempted illegal import.
“Our technical expertise and sophisticated technology means that we will find the drugs, regardless of the method of concealment these criminals use,” Superintendent Rosemond said
“This operation shows that when we work together with our law enforcement partners, criminals don’t stand a chance and can expect to be brought to justice.”
