The Australia Federal Police (AFP) has issued a call for public help in finding the importers of a consignment of cocaine that was discovered in a routine inspection at Port Botany.
On Thursday, Australian Border Force officers were carrying out x-ray scans of inbound shipping containers from Italy when they spotted something odd in the compressor compartment of a reefer container. This is a popular location for smugglers to hide contraband, since it is easily accessible from the outside. On closer inspection, they found 30 kilos of cocaine. If sold on the street, this consignment would be enough for about 150,000 retail sales and would be worth about AUD$10 million.
The drugs were seized by AFP officers, and an investigation is under way to find the criminals responsible for the shipment.
“The organized crime syndicates behind these importations don't care about the harm they're causing, the hospital admissions, drug driving crashes, or violence between drug distributors that puts innocent members of the public at risk. They care only about the profits they can make," an AFP spokesman said.
ABF Superintendent Jared Leighton said the detection demonstrates the capabilities of ABF officers in the field to identify unusual or abnormal circumstances.
"Whomever has attempted to import these substances has attempted to conceal them within the structure of the container, something which ABF officers assess and monitor several times a day," AFP Superintendent Jared Leighton said. "It's a warning to those who try sneaky tactics to get beyond our border controls, we work closely with our partner agencies with intelligence and officer knowledge to look at all aspects of a potential import."
The AFP has asked for anyone with information about smuggling activity to report what they know on its Border Watch online portal.
Cocaine has an exceptionally high street value in Australia, and the authorities regularly confiscate large shipments arriving by sea. In April, the AFP busted a Brisbane resident who allegedly masterminded a multi-tonne drug import conspiracy. The 36-year-old suspect was accused of running a domestic organized-crime network that handled at least three large-scale smuggling operations that landed about two tonnes of cocaine in Australia, and he was suspected to have been involved in plots to import another 20 tonnes of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin over the course of 2023-24 alone.
