Speaker 1: It's the phenomenal wealth generated in places of phenomenal poverty
Speaker 1: leads to these grotesque situations where nothing's impossible, anything can
Speaker 1: be bought, anybody can be brought.
Speaker 2: She expects him to say, oh, yeah, yeah, drugs bad,
Speaker 2: don't do it, and he's like, nah, I had a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 1: What we've got now is a giant version of the
Speaker 1: American prohibition experiment of the nineteen twenties, which created the
Speaker 1: modern mafia. I'm Andrew rule is his love and crimes.
Speaker 1: Today we have the pleasure and the privilege of talking
Speaker 1: to my longtime colleague Stephen Drill. Stephen, I've been away
Speaker 1: researching various things out of the way places overseas, such
Speaker 1: as Albania.
Speaker 2: It's a good place to go where there are.
Speaker 1: Many large, shiny mercedes.
Speaker 2: And very wealthy people there.
Speaker 1: Yes, I would think so poverty cheek by jail with wealth.
Speaker 2: What have you said previously? Behind every fortune is a crime?
Speaker 1: I didn't make that up. That was somebody else's claims.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's from literature. It has been said before,
Speaker 1: behind every great fortune, it's a crime. And I suspect
Speaker 1: that in some countries. You see that in every glossy
Speaker 1: hotel or every casino casino. I think so. I think
Speaker 1: that's true. But while I've been over there, you know,
Speaker 1: just basically hanging around and watching, You've been here busy
Speaker 1: doing stuff.
Speaker 2: I've been chipping away for the last twelve months on a.
Speaker 1: Podcast, chipping away for twelve months, and this podcast is
Speaker 1: about cocaine.
Speaker 2: It is about cocaine. I've teamed up with two reporters
Speaker 2: from the Time, so the Times and the Sunday Times.
Speaker 2: They're very separate newspapers, even though they're in the same
Speaker 2: building on the same floor. It's a law in the
Speaker 2: UK that can't be edited by the same people. So
Speaker 2: Times in Sunday Times very pre eminent publications, and we've
Speaker 2: all worked together. We've gone to six countries, traveled fifty
Speaker 2: thousand kilometers to look at the aids of the cocaine trade.
Speaker 2: We've gone from Colombia where it's grown, all the way
Speaker 2: over to England where we've spoken to people who've been
Speaker 2: caught in the crossfire, and we've gone to Jubai, and
Speaker 2: then we've actually ended up right back here in Australia
Speaker 2: to where the money is allegedly launded.
Speaker 1: And even on a global scale. Australia's part in this
Speaker 1: is significant? Is that true?
Speaker 2: Australia's part is extremely significant in this, Andrew.
Speaker 1: You're not just exaggerating relevant, No, I'm not.
Speaker 2: No, No, actually no, I genuinely am not. Like, it's
Speaker 2: surprising how important Australia has become in the global cocaine trade.
Speaker 2: And that's because of one thing.
Speaker 1: We pay too much for it, pay way too much
Speaker 1: over it.
Speaker 2: And not only do we pay too much for it,
Speaker 2: we love paying too much for it. People here are like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I've got some coke. I've got a
Speaker 2: bag of coke on. I'm posh because I can afford
Speaker 2: to go and spend three hundred dollars to put this
Speaker 2: stuff up my nose. Okay, So excellent marketing it is.
Speaker 2: Isn't it to waste money? I can afford to waste money.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's like buying a Lamborghini.
Speaker 1: Or lighting your cigar with a one hundred dollar note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, you know, or destroying your life. And
Speaker 2: it's funny. Everyone I talked to who's sort of my
Speaker 2: age about this, I've done this podcast and cocaine, they're
Speaker 2: like they have a story about a bloke who's blown
Speaker 2: up his marriage because he's done too much cocaine.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows somebody.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows somebody. I was in the I was in
Speaker 2: the Quantus lounge out the other day because I was
Speaker 2: coming back from Sydney and I just randomly got talking
Speaker 2: to this bloke.
Speaker 1: And Sydney's the place to hear those stories.
Speaker 2: Sydney is, but it's in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Of course it is. But I've got a question where
Speaker 1: someone has done a very stupid thing. I'd say a
Speaker 1: Christmas party or some event where they've played up and
Speaker 1: out of character. You'd think done something really rash and
Speaker 1: silly and sexist and predatory. But how do you think
Speaker 1: sometimes it's because they're under the influence.
Speaker 2: Of the Colombian marching powder.
Speaker 1: Think, Yeah, I'm just asking.
Speaker 2: I would think that there's two parts to that question.
Speaker 2: One is they're stupid and they should have done it.
Speaker 2: But also, if you're my age, if you've had too
Speaker 2: many beers, you kind of just fall asleep, Whereas if
Speaker 2: you're still up and about in a position where you
Speaker 2: can be a bit stupid and a bit predatory, or
Speaker 2: then you probably may have had some chemical assistance as well.
Speaker 1: I see I've resigned to spend more time with my
Speaker 1: family because there was a sadness at the Christmas party
Speaker 1: or whatever that could be it.
Speaker 2: There's lots of potential reasons, but theoretically it might be
Speaker 2: theoretically a reason why some blokes who should know better,
Speaker 2: and sadly it's usually blokes get caught in those situations
Speaker 2: they do.
Speaker 1: Now, tell me what you've found out about the cocaine trade.
Speaker 1: That is going to shock and amaze me and shock
Speaker 1: and amaze our listeners.
Speaker 2: What we've done in the podcast is really look at
Speaker 2: the business of cocaine, so we're trying to not so
Speaker 2: much have a view of whether it's right or wrong.
Speaker 2: We're not saying legalize it, We're not saying, you know,
Speaker 2: ban it. We're just wondering did the war on drugs
Speaker 2: kind of work? And when you start looking at the
Speaker 2: business side of things, you realize it's going to be
Speaker 2: a very difficult thing for anyone to stop. Because the
Speaker 2: markup from Colombia to here in Australia, it's a sixty
Speaker 2: four million percent markup.
Speaker 1: Sixty four million percent markt at the base point.
Speaker 2: When it's a coca leaf in Colombia, it's worth about
Speaker 2: point zero zero zero nine of a cent here, that's
Speaker 2: for a gram. Here in Australia, you can pay up
Speaker 2: to five hundred dollars for a gramm of cocaine depending
Speaker 2: on the purity. And the purity in Australia on the
Speaker 2: streets it ranges from twenty two percent pure cocaine in
Speaker 2: the gram you're getting to sixty percent and that's about it.
Speaker 2: So it's been cut with all sorts of random stuff
Speaker 2: like love amasole, which is a worm killer in chickens
Speaker 2: and cattle, but it looks like cocaine. So it's popular
Speaker 2: as a cutting agent, but.
Speaker 1: Not something I'd want to put into my body.
Speaker 2: No, But when you're trying to be posh and thinking
Speaker 2: you're fantastic and you're showing off to your friends about
Speaker 2: how much money you have because you can go and
Speaker 2: buy cocaine, well perhaps you don't care.
Speaker 1: Interesting the history of it. It's not as new drug
Speaker 1: as a lot of us imagine, although it's you know,
Speaker 1: its popularity in the last twenty five years has exploded,
Speaker 1: I guess. But I can recall as a very young
Speaker 1: reporter talking to old time crooks. So I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties talking to people who were around during
Speaker 1: World War Two and these old guys that had spent
Speaker 1: you know, they run robbers and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Very old time Ozzie crooks. And they talked about back
Speaker 1: in the old days in the forties and fifties grouse
Speaker 1: snow ten bobbago.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah, So we're still in Australia.
Speaker 1: It was the forties. The crooks, crooks in those days
Speaker 1: call it snow and they used to use it. And
Speaker 1: I think it goes all the way back to World
Speaker 1: War One, when World War One veterans returned from the
Speaker 1: trenches of Europe with cocaine habits. It had been given
Speaker 1: to them to keep going, keep them awake, keep them up,
Speaker 1: keep them brave, painkiller whatever. And so there were men
Speaker 1: returning in nineteen ninety nineteen twenty with cocaine habits.
Speaker 2: That's a problem.
Speaker 1: And if one of the earliest references you'll see in
Speaker 1: Australia is to people being charged over it in around
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, amazing a one hundred years ago has been
Speaker 1: around for a while.
Speaker 2: I mean people in Colombia have been eating the coca
Speaker 2: leaves just for thousands of years. To sort of as
Speaker 2: an appetite supressant and for medicinal purposes. I meant, but
Speaker 2: having one or two coca leaves is different to the
Speaker 2: supercharged stuff today. But it's interesting to know that it
Speaker 2: is going been there for a while. I mean, Coca
Speaker 2: Cola itself was said to have had cocaine in it once.
Speaker 2: That's the sort of theory. And that was taken out
Speaker 2: and it wasn't. Sherlock Holmes and the snuff boxes, is
Speaker 2: that not cocaine?
Speaker 1: Probably?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's nothing new under the sun. But what
Speaker 2: is new is that the biking gangs, the crime gangs,
Speaker 2: they've got so much better. And it's this thing on
Speaker 2: the desk. It's a mobile phone. Because twenty years ago
Speaker 2: in Colombia, if you wanted to try and move a
Speaker 2: quilo of cocaine, how do you do that? How do
Speaker 2: you talk to someone in Australia about that? But now
Speaker 2: you're not moving a kilo, you're moving a ton, you're
Speaker 2: moving one hundred tons and you want to talk to
Speaker 2: someone in Australia, Well you've got a message app, you
Speaker 2: can do it.
Speaker 1: Ok. How are the big operators moving the stuff? I
Speaker 1: mean obviously ships, but yeah, bits and pieces, so there's
Speaker 1: some aeroplanes.
Speaker 2: Well, the Americans spending a lot of money to support
Speaker 2: the Columbian police to try and stop cocaine coming into America.
Speaker 2: It's a tough job, but one thing in the advantage
Speaker 2: for the Americans, unlike Mexico, the land the geography between
Speaker 2: Colombia and Mexico that you can't drive it. There's no
Speaker 2: way to get it through. You have to get the
Speaker 2: stuff out through the water. There's no roads between Columbia
Speaker 2: and Mexico that the mountains are too high, so that
Speaker 2: gives a police a chance to stop it coming out
Speaker 2: on vessels from the north of Colombia and the Caribbean Sea.
Speaker 2: So pretty much it's as hard a border as you
Speaker 2: could possibly get. But what's happened with the cocaine trade
Speaker 2: is they've gone, well, we can't go over it, we
Speaker 2: can't go under we'll have to go through it. So
Speaker 2: they've gone over the hills into Brazil, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the cocaine now is going through that direction, and
Speaker 2: that's something they call the Southern Cone, which is a
Speaker 2: very boring way of saying that going through Argentina. So
Speaker 2: it's going down the Pirana and now forgive me if
Speaker 2: you've got some Spanish speakers listening if I've pronounced that incorrectly.
Speaker 2: But it goes out through the Piranha River, which is
Speaker 2: about four thousand miles, and that it goes into Uruguay
Speaker 2: and comes out through Argentina as well, So it's coming
Speaker 2: through every other possible which way. It's like putting a
Speaker 2: piece of wood in front tap while the water is
Speaker 2: just going to get around the piece of wood. And
Speaker 2: the difference is now, in twenty sixteen, we used to
Speaker 2: have aerial spraying crop spraying of cocaine plants in Columbia.
Speaker 2: Now that changed. The government said, look, we're worried about
Speaker 2: harming local people and giving them cancer because the chemicals
Speaker 2: aren't great, so let's stop it. That has meant that
Speaker 2: the amount of coca plants growing has at least doubled,
Speaker 2: if not trebled, since twenty sixteen. And also the FARC,
Speaker 2: which is FARC I'm not swearing on this podcast, is
Speaker 2: the revolutionary forces in Colombia did a peace deal with
Speaker 2: the Colombian government in about twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: what that meant was they sort of stopped They called
Speaker 2: it narco terrorism. They stopped fighting with the Colombian government.
Speaker 2: But it's also meant there's no go areas in Colombia
Speaker 2: where the government troops just won't go. The fark soldiers
Speaker 2: actually controllers areas, which has meant, well, there's more chance
Speaker 2: of no one having eyes on those coca plants, and
Speaker 2: the crops have got bigger. But what it's also done
Speaker 2: is it's created a bit more of an open market
Speaker 2: because once the revolutionary forces stopped being so dominant and
Speaker 2: having to fight and having to sell the cocaine to
Speaker 2: fund their terrorism in Columbia, well, other jokers have gone
Speaker 2: into the trade. And your friends in Albania where you
Speaker 2: just went to, they managed to get some plane chickets
Speaker 2: to Bogata and they've set up shop there. They're going
Speaker 2: out and they're taking a lot of drugs through Ecuador
Speaker 2: as well. So there's a new smuggling route out through Ecuador,
Speaker 2: which previously was relatively stable. And last year we saw
Speaker 2: pictures on the television of armed gangs going into a
Speaker 2: live TV studio and shooting people live on air, and
Speaker 2: the president was assassinated.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the phenomenal wealth generated in places of phenomenal
Speaker 1: property leads to these grotesque situations where nothing's impossible, anything
Speaker 1: can be bought, anybody can be brought, Prostitution goes through
Speaker 1: the roof, everything goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and what I find frustrating is that the
Speaker 2: same people who will take their cocaine on the weekend,
Speaker 2: they'll sit there and brag about it. They show off
Speaker 2: to their friends, They'll be proud to pay three hundred
Speaker 2: dollars because they're so posh. Their choices are causing this violence.
Speaker 2: They are the demand that is causing the supply.
Speaker 1: Very true. One often suspects that there's a bit of
Speaker 1: winking and nodding around the place that a lot of
Speaker 1: people who you know talk about cocaine being bad news
Speaker 1: and the way we are really but we're genuine in
Speaker 1: their private life. They're not nearly as critical I would
Speaker 1: some lawyers, judges, judges, Yeah, maybe some agents, oh, I
Speaker 1: think so real. Also, the drug dealers aren't stupid, they've
Speaker 1: gone where the cash is. And now sports people they
Speaker 1: there has been some reports in the paper about some
Speaker 1: professional sports people. They do get drug tested more often
Speaker 1: than the rest of the community. It's not fattening.
Speaker 2: I don't know how true that is that I think
Speaker 2: people sometimes if they were super controlled, if they didn't
Speaker 2: drink alcohol with it, maybe it's not fattening, but I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people would get on the beers
Speaker 2: and then get on the gear.
Speaker 1: It is the perfect jockey drug because jockeys cannot eat,
Speaker 1: you know, they're starving themselves for a living, and they
Speaker 1: would love to eat, and they'd love to drink and
Speaker 1: they can't, so they can't. They're not even drinking water.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are not even water. They're drinking
Speaker 1: tiny little bits of water. They ride dehydrated, which is
Speaker 1: why they're often you know, angry well and make mistakes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. That's why sometimes you see mistakes made. And
Speaker 1: so it's an ideal drug for particularly jockeys for that.
Speaker 1: For that reason, maybe even let's say racing car drivers,
Speaker 1: small guys who've got to stay light. Money is not
Speaker 1: a real problem.
Speaker 2: For them, but they could get away with it. And
Speaker 2: also cocaine does in th coome out of your system
Speaker 2: a little bit more quickly than most other drugs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it suits some lifestyles. It sort of suits
Speaker 1: them as a substitute for the more conventional mind altering
Speaker 1: substances like be it one and someone.
Speaker 2: And I also see all the stats now about kids
Speaker 2: aren't drinking as much, and that just means they're getting
Speaker 2: off their heads on other spect So I'm going to
Speaker 2: mate who works for a brewering company, is like, what's
Speaker 2: going on with these kids?
Speaker 1: They're not drinking anymore, and.
Speaker 2: It's because they're doing drugs. You know. I spoke to
Speaker 2: someone else who had young children and at a private school,
Speaker 2: and thirteen year olds are on all sorts of other substances,
Speaker 2: and it's only going to get more and more common.
Speaker 2: It becomes a really tough one. What do we do.
Speaker 2: Do we just throw our hands in the air and
Speaker 2: say that's it, we let all drugs through through the door.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not of that view because a the crime groups
Speaker 2: aren't going to just go, oh yeah, what we're Cocaine's legal. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm going to stop selling this and making you know,
Speaker 2: three hundred dollars a gram. I'll go onto something else.
Speaker 2: It's less profitable. I doubt that's going to happen. And
Speaker 2: if they do, they'll go onto something else like fentanyl,
Speaker 2: which is cheap to make and even more.
Speaker 1: Deadly as yes, that's right, fental wick and stuff it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. Now you've told us the production's gone up,
Speaker 1: the prices are high at the same time, and this
Speaker 1: is forced out of South America along various routes. It
Speaker 1: finds its natural level, it finds its way to the surface,
Speaker 1: it gets it finds its sway to the markets.
Speaker 2: So it also doesn't go directly from South America to Sydney.
Speaker 2: What will happen is it will go all over the place.
Speaker 2: It will pinball around the world in a way to
Speaker 2: try and evade authorities. Because if they see a ship
Speaker 2: coming straight from South America, from Ecuador or from Columbia,
Speaker 2: they're going to go, hang on, let's go and check
Speaker 2: this out. But say it's been to Canada. Say it's
Speaker 2: been to Hong Kong. So it's been to France, so
Speaker 2: it's been to China.
Speaker 1: Well not as obvious.
Speaker 2: It's not as obvious. And those ships, they can go
Speaker 2: from a beatersz quite easily, because that's how the global
Speaker 2: trade does work.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's the same ship, it's traceable, of course,
Speaker 1: but if it's offloading somewhere, then you put it on
Speaker 1: the one that originates in Canada, which it looks in
Speaker 1: an innocent origin port of origin. You need to get
Speaker 1: on the one that's the innocent, relatively innocent port of origin.
Speaker 2: You've got someone on the inside. You know which containers
Speaker 2: are going to be checked exactly. Not because if we
Speaker 2: did that, if we su checked every single container that
Speaker 2: came into the ports of Sydney or Melbourne.
Speaker 1: We'd find a lot of tobacco.
Speaker 2: We would find a lot of tobacco. We would, but
Speaker 2: we'd never get our kids Christmas presents because they'd all
Speaker 2: be sitting on the dock.
Speaker 1: Is that a bad thing? I kind of like Cama.
Speaker 2: The kids toys are pretty cheap there, especially good for
Speaker 2: other children's birthday parties. So it just wouldn't work. When
Speaker 2: you look at the tobacco. They're finding ten million cigarettes
Speaker 2: a week in Melbourne alone. And I can go down
Speaker 2: to my local milk bar and I'm not saying where
Speaker 2: I live. I can go down to a milk bar
Speaker 2: which may be near my house or not, and they're
Speaker 2: behind the counter. They're everywhere.
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, so we can't. And when governments produced
Speaker 1: figures health departments saying that smoking is almost extinct because
Speaker 1: no one's smoking anymore, because there's not much excise because
Speaker 1: they're not selling it. But the reality is there's plenty
Speaker 1: of people smoking, but they're all smoking the cheap stuff.
Speaker 1: The jop and the imputs well. It just shows you
Speaker 1: how deluded authorities can be, particularly if they want to be.
Speaker 2: Fifty seven dollars for a pack of smokes. It's going
Speaker 2: to really encourage alternative markets.
Speaker 1: I would have thought so. The great law of unexpected outcomes,
Speaker 1: you know, the unintended unintended consequences is far better phrase.
Speaker 2: Speaking of unintended consequences. One of the problems with the
Speaker 2: drug trade is you may not even be a drug user,
Speaker 2: but it's not far from your door. And we spoke
Speaker 2: to Tim Edwards, whose daughter Ali, she was murdered outside
Speaker 2: a pub on Christmas Eve in the UK. She went
Speaker 2: outside for a cigarette and it's Christmas Eve in the UK.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cold. She's out there.
Speaker 1: Having a drink.
Speaker 2: And in the UK on Christmas Eve, if you're in
Speaker 2: your twenties, you're at the pub. It is one of
Speaker 2: the best nights of the year. Everyone's out and about.
Speaker 2: There was a young fellow there by the name of
Speaker 2: Connor Schapman. He's been found guilty, he's been in jailed
Speaker 2: for forty eight years for this. He turns up at
Speaker 2: that pub, the Wallersley Pub in the world and opens
Speaker 2: fire with a machine gun. Why did he do this
Speaker 2: Because somebody had wrapped up his mate the day before.
Speaker 2: Oh so he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Speaker 2: And because of that, our family's lost a loved one,
Speaker 2: twenty six year old girl who is no longer with us.
Speaker 2: And these are the things that we sort of forget
Speaker 2: about the drug trader, is that you can be a victim.
Speaker 2: Even there's two surfers in Perth a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: in Perth, boys in Mexico. In Mexico, they got murdered
Speaker 2: by people linked to the cartels because they were victims
Speaker 2: of a robbery and they tried to well we don't
Speaker 2: know exactly the circumstances, but they have been shot by
Speaker 2: people connected to the cartels.
Speaker 1: Of course, terrible business.
Speaker 2: There is real problems with the cocaine trade, and I
Speaker 2: think people probably forget, you know, their choices do have consequences,
Speaker 2: not just for them.
Speaker 1: Now you've already released three episodes of this most excellent series.
Speaker 1: You've got a total of eight.
Speaker 2: What is the fourth one fourth episode is called the
Speaker 2: pineapple Trader. It's about a beller called Pete Costa.
Speaker 1: Yeah in the Netherlands. Sounds like a Dutch.
Speaker 2: Name, yeah it is, but Pete is is pineapple in Dutch.
Speaker 2: So he was the pineapple guy from Costa Rica because
Speaker 2: he always kept going there and that became his nickname.
Speaker 2: But he was not just bringing pineapples back in the
Speaker 2: actually being containers. He was also bringing back cocaine. Was
Speaker 2: he He was making a fair bit of money about this,
Speaker 2: and he was he was kind of I like sort
Speaker 2: of oil or water. He just sort of slid through
Speaker 2: everywhere and no one seemed to notice him as he
Speaker 2: built his empire. But then he got a bit angry.
Speaker 2: Someone had ripped him off into property deal to the
Speaker 2: tune of about one hundred million dollars, and it started
Speaker 2: a bit of a dispute, and mister Costa then thought
Speaker 2: it was a good idea to set up a torture chamber.
Speaker 2: So he went to some lengths. He got a shipping container,
Speaker 2: buried it underground, covered the whole thing in plastic, and
Speaker 2: had a dentist chair all set up ready to go.
Speaker 2: And next to the dentist chair was scalpels and hammers
Speaker 2: and drills ready to go. So he's now serving some
Speaker 2: time for that, but.
Speaker 1: All over a property deal. We'll have a property deal.
Speaker 2: And he'd managed to sort of keep things professional for
Speaker 2: a long time, but when it came to the crunch,
Speaker 2: he got a bit a bit greedy. And we don't
Speaker 2: know how many people lost their fingers or their thumbs
Speaker 2: or their toes in that torture chamber, but it was
Speaker 2: very well set up.
Speaker 1: That very spooky. That that's episode four. What's episode five?
Speaker 2: Episode five ninety testing my memory? Episode five we go
Speaker 2: look it up. Episode five we go to Dubai where
Speaker 2: we're chasing the money. So follow the money, Follow the
Speaker 2: money because another thing that's sort of it's great to
Speaker 2: make money out of cocaine, but what you have to
Speaker 2: do is actually try and get rid of it, and
Speaker 2: you can't just go and pop it in a bank.
Speaker 2: So there was a guy called called Abdullah al Falasi
Speaker 2: who's in jail for nine years as we speak. He
Speaker 2: decided to actually get cash, wrap it up in plastic,
Speaker 2: chuck it in suitcases and get them perhaps naive or
Speaker 2: naive young women who were beauty sell on staff in
Speaker 2: the pandemic in the UK and just pop them on
Speaker 2: a plane to Dubai for a few days, all expenses
Speaker 2: page and you get three thousand dollars cash And all
Speaker 2: you have to do was jump on a business class
Speaker 2: flight with seven bags filled with pounds up to four
Speaker 2: and a half million pounds per trip.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Carry money?
Speaker 2: Carry money? They moved at least one hundred million pounds
Speaker 2: this way over a couple of years until it got
Speaker 2: wound up.
Speaker 1: And they just say nothing to declare that to be that.
Speaker 2: No, you could declare it because in Jubai, you know,
Speaker 2: five million pounds is just it's just walking around money there.
Speaker 1: So if you went to the there's no problem taking
Speaker 1: turn up.
Speaker 2: With a piece of paper saying this is money from
Speaker 2: our gold trading business, and declare it. Then you get
Speaker 2: it gets counted, so they have actual counting machines.
Speaker 1: At the airport, and then what would happen.
Speaker 2: Then they give you a piece of paper and declare
Speaker 2: it clean, and you go and pop it in the.
Speaker 1: Bank, in the bank, in the bank.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful, all good, And you might just be paying
Speaker 2: off some friends who have been dealing cocaine or supplying
Speaker 2: you with that cocaine from Dubai and also Dubai has
Speaker 2: become a bit of a haven for criminals, so scaleyways
Speaker 2: go there, Australian Australian Scaley wags. Yes, there's been a
Speaker 2: fellow called Angelo Pandelli who's on our most Wanted list,
Speaker 2: who has bought a property over there. It's currently being
Speaker 2: gutted and rebuilt on the Palm Mirror, that sort of
Speaker 2: fancy man made island that you can see from the sky,
Speaker 2: and they're kind of it's a good place to live,
Speaker 2: I would imagine, because they're like who bedroom houses.
Speaker 1: Good in its way. Yeah, I mean, it's like the
Speaker 1: Truman Show dropped into a desert where people in long
Speaker 1: white headdresses drive rain drovers and may well run over you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a weird place. You can't just go
Speaker 2: and walk around.
Speaker 1: On the street because if they run over you, they
Speaker 1: don't care because no one's going to prosecute them.
Speaker 2: There's perhaps one rule for the locals and one rule
Speaker 2: for the It is bad.
Speaker 1: I think if you're the second cousin could run over
Speaker 1: you without any problems.
Speaker 2: Possibly, Yes, Well, you know, there's there's other stories about
Speaker 2: there I can think of, which I may not mention.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so there's lots of cash there and that's
Speaker 2: where they're doing the deals as well. It's become an
Speaker 2: international cocaine hub.
Speaker 1: Is it okay? And that's just the a moral nature.
Speaker 2: Of well, I think they're just interested in trying to
Speaker 2: get some money in and from their point of view,
Speaker 2: they're like, well, we're not having the drugs here because
Speaker 2: it's very expensive and difficult to find drugs in Jubai's
Speaker 2: probably it's hard to find a beer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're sort of becoming the Switzerland of the Middle East.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, we don't care how you making money,
Speaker 1: but we we'll mind it for you.
Speaker 2: Mind for you.
Speaker 1: We've got some lovely hotel suite to stay in when
Speaker 1: you come here to handle it.
Speaker 2: And then they've also got fair bit of gold trading.
Speaker 2: There's a gold souk in Dubai whether you can go
Speaker 2: and trade anything, and one of our colleagues went under
Speaker 2: color and spoke to a trader there and said, I
Speaker 2: want to buy one hundred and eight thousand pounds worth
Speaker 2: of gold, and there's an audio recording of it. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: just between us, the money came from crime, do you care?
Speaker 2: And the local gold trader who we've given a new
Speaker 2: name in the podcast to protect him, and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't care wherever it comes from, just go for it.
Speaker 2: So that's where the money sort of rolls up. And
Speaker 2: then eventually it's got to get back into Australia and
Speaker 2: moved around the world again to eat.
Speaker 1: So they're turning dirty cash into gold.
Speaker 2: Dirty cash into gold, and then you can take it
Speaker 2: in your.
Speaker 1: Bags portable and anonymous.
Speaker 2: Anonymous melts it down, so could company, or you can
Speaker 2: melt it down into jewelry, wear it, wear it. So
Speaker 2: what if you're wearing.
Speaker 1: Funny how the crook's always like that heavy gold stuff?
Speaker 2: Heavy gold stuff. I mean, what if you have a
Speaker 2: really fancy necklace that maybe you know, four or five ounces,
Speaker 2: or maybe you get a killer of it, or maybe
Speaker 2: you did heavy rings or all sorts of stuff. You
Speaker 2: can probably walk through the airport with half a million
Speaker 2: dollars worth.
Speaker 1: Of funny what crooks gather. Heavy jewelry is one of
Speaker 1: the things, but reptile fish in the paintings, all sorts
Speaker 1: of funny things.
Speaker 2: It's a bit. Yeah, your art is a big way
Speaker 2: to launder money as well. And there's also a bit.
Speaker 1: Of old one like collectible one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, collectible one, and then if it gets smashed you
Speaker 2: can claim it on insurance smashed or perhaps drunk.
Speaker 1: You never know, so I don't want to test your
Speaker 1: memory too much. But what would episode six be?
Speaker 2: Episode six is also injured bias. We had a couple
Speaker 2: episodes there and then we end up coming back into Australia.
Speaker 1: Where we the Times guys came here too.
Speaker 2: I did that one, so we all sort of we
Speaker 2: separated the jobs out and I went and knocked on
Speaker 2: a door at a house in Melbourne which was accused
Speaker 2: of being the process of crime, and had a very
Speaker 2: lengthy chat with one of the people there who said
Speaker 2: they weren't money Launders. They were driving a four hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars Mercedes because they were doing big business. And
Speaker 2: you can't drive around in a day or a Toyota
Speaker 2: because it wouldn't you wouldn't look the part.
Speaker 1: Well let's you know, look look at the state agents
Speaker 1: they do.
Speaker 2: I don't know how they afford those cars though.
Speaker 1: But they see it as part of the image. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they take the view. Clients don't want to
Speaker 1: use somebody who's not successful enough to look successful. It's
Speaker 1: part of the psychologists.
Speaker 2: Are terrible though. That's yeah, you have bad taste.
Speaker 1: Yeah they look like spiffs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be. So that's where we've wound up.
Speaker 2: We followed the whole thing, the cash, all the way
Speaker 2: around the.
Speaker 1: World, and how was the reception when you're knocked on
Speaker 1: that door?
Speaker 2: They it was a bit frosty to start with. They said,
Speaker 2: hang on, we're not involved in it anyway. And I
Speaker 2: went okay, So went not on the neighbor's door and
Speaker 2: I said, have you seen anyone move in the last
Speaker 2: few months. They're like, no, that's the same people. So
Speaker 2: I went back and asked again. I go, oh, they say,
Speaker 2: you haven't moved. What's happening And they said, look, we're
Speaker 2: not We're not directly involved, but we've got some relatives
Speaker 2: were involved, and they sort of they were able to detail,
Speaker 2: sort of in quite a large amount of depth, why
Speaker 2: the police were wrong about their assertions. And that's still
Speaker 2: a matter that's going through the courts as we speak.
Speaker 2: Probably later in the year they might come back on.
Speaker 1: But this has all to do with laundering money.
Speaker 2: Laundering money, that's the allegations.
Speaker 1: Waundering money is a big thing isn't it really around
Speaker 1: the world. And when it comes to mainly drug money,
Speaker 1: really by large, drug money is well, not not exclusively,
Speaker 1: but that's the big one.
Speaker 2: It's where the problem is as well, because if you
Speaker 2: end up with cash, if you're trying to run a business,
Speaker 2: say a restaurant, that might be an obvious way to
Speaker 2: launder some cash. How do you know how many people
Speaker 2: came in that day for a meal? You say you
Speaker 2: might have ten customers, you might say there was five hundred.
Speaker 2: If they all pay cash, maybe that's really who came in.
Speaker 2: But if you're opening up a legitimate restaurant next door
Speaker 2: to one that's been used for money.
Speaker 1: Laundering motels the same, how does that work? Well, it
Speaker 1: does not fair. I mean they'll rack it up in
Speaker 1: the Riverina and this will have happened across the world.
Speaker 1: It's not unique to anywhere. But the mafia money from
Speaker 1: in those days, cannabis buy a motel in countrytown, put
Speaker 1: a patsy manager in and the reality is the motel
Speaker 1: might run it forty percent occupancy. It's just just viable nearly,
Speaker 1: but when the mafia r on it, you know suddenly
Speaker 1: it's because they throwing they're throwing money in the till
Speaker 1: it's fake. Just not washing the sheets anymore, because you
Speaker 1: know they're not actually getting people through the door. They
Speaker 1: just make it.
Speaker 2: Look as if it is.
Speaker 1: Of course, the book profits twelve months later. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: they've doubled their income. It's wonderful. And then they can
Speaker 1: put it on the market and sell it for an
Speaker 1: inflated price to some poor person who's then going to
Speaker 1: go broke. They do the double, and then the new
Speaker 1: person goes broke because it's you, having retired from your
Speaker 1: job and you said, let's move to the country and
Speaker 1: buy this beautiful hotel. And then guess what, you sell
Speaker 1: it because you broke, and they buy it back and
Speaker 1: do it all again.
Speaker 2: That's genius, just perpetual motion, one born every minute. Yes,
Speaker 2: but that would happen if you had someone from the city.
Speaker 2: Not realizing.
Speaker 1: Our friend Tony mog Bell owned something like seventeen boutiques
Speaker 1: at some station. He would have a Patsy boutique shops
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, but often clothes, and he put
Speaker 1: a Patsy in and said, you know, you can have
Speaker 1: a salary, you can do what you like. But when
Speaker 1: I say we sell a business. We sell a business,
Speaker 1: and I think really what happened was he be running
Speaker 1: money through the till when.
Speaker 2: He's selling the businesses to himself as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it'd be all different reasons why he'd
Speaker 1: do certain things, but he would buy things like that
Speaker 1: and establish them as false fronts. And you know that's
Speaker 1: what drug people do when they put a lot of
Speaker 1: money to play around with.
Speaker 2: Well, and we're talking about sixty billion dollars a year
Speaker 2: just in Australia.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So if you think about that.
Speaker 1: Is it enough to square Victoria's debt?
Speaker 2: You I think that's about one hundred and eighty billion
Speaker 2: at the moment. But there's a lot of money being
Speaker 2: spent and that's got to go somewhere. Some of it
Speaker 2: would go off shore, probably a lot of it. A
Speaker 2: lot of it would be spent on perhaps gambling, maybe
Speaker 2: illegal gambling. There's estimates that for every dollar spent on
Speaker 2: the legal gambling markets, there is about eight or ten
Speaker 2: that's spent on the illegal markets, is roughly speaking, even.
Speaker 1: In Australian context.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the there's games, remember there's like electronic games,
Speaker 2: which boggle with my mind why anyone.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't do it. I can't believe it. Sometimes eighty times. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there was like when there was about eight million
Speaker 2: dollars being spent on those e games and there was
Speaker 2: a couple of young kids got caught. They actually stopped
Speaker 2: playing to win and they were betting on themselves losing.
Speaker 2: And when I was discussing that with some organized crime investigators,
Speaker 2: they told me that, yeah, there's about eighty million dollars
Speaker 2: being spent on that illegally, it's ten times the size
Speaker 2: of the level market.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But other than that, yeah, you might buy your own
Speaker 2: product and you might have a gamble a bit, but
Speaker 2: the money's got to go somewhere, and that, to me,
Speaker 2: I think is the real weak point in the trade.
Speaker 2: If the police can do more to make that really
Speaker 2: hard to spend money, yes, which they have to a
Speaker 2: certain extent. They've made it hard to spend money in Australia,
Speaker 2: but they've meant the crooks went overseas, and.
Speaker 1: I think it is hard to spend money in a
Speaker 1: way that can't be traced easily.
Speaker 2: But we love tapping our cards now, so it's a
Speaker 2: little bit harder to actually make up some hairdresser appointments
Speaker 2: if they weren't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, it's the eldest thing in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: years ago when there were corrupt police getting cash payments,
Speaker 1: often significant cash payments in relation to their salaries. I
Speaker 1: remember one of them being interviewed about it, very sad
Speaker 1: man because he'd been caught, and he said, in the end,
Speaker 1: what did I do? You know, a lot of some
Speaker 1: nice suits, some very nice shoes, and I'd go to
Speaker 1: the races and bet on horses. But apart from it,
Speaker 1: I couldn't go and buy you a good bye car,
Speaker 1: buy good cars. I couldn't get first class tickets around
Speaker 1: the world or any of that stuff, because it's obvious.
Speaker 1: So okay, I'll go to the races wearing a nice
Speaker 1: suit and nice shoes, and the following week, I wear
Speaker 1: a different cuitain different shoes, and I bet on horses
Speaker 1: and mostly lose because you mostly do it. And you know,
Speaker 1: cat paying cash at restaurants. He says, you can go
Speaker 1: out and have a good meal and pay the cash.
Speaker 1: But even that leaves you a bit exposed. If you
Speaker 1: know anybody's once, anybody's watching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you bring your mates along as.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got the hang on how does he thought that.
Speaker 2: We did actually interview or if you don't know. Hamilton
Speaker 2: of The Times interviewed a corrupt doc worker in the
Speaker 2: Netherlands and he'd done some time for it. He'd been
Speaker 2: sort of helping drug syndicates for about twenty years move
Speaker 2: their drugs.
Speaker 1: He was adore as adore and.
Speaker 2: Then she asked him at the end of the interview,
Speaker 2: will so was it worth it?
Speaker 1: What do you think? You know?
Speaker 2: And you had twenty years where you had to light
Speaker 2: to your life, and you know, you ended up spending
Speaker 2: the money on prostitutes and drugs and all sorts of
Speaker 2: other things. And she expects him to say, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: drugs are bad, don't do it, and he's like, nah,
Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun. So you know, for
Speaker 2: some people, I think they're happy to live that life
Speaker 2: and they want to be be living moment to moment,
Speaker 2: but it does come at a cost. And like, if
Speaker 2: you've got any sense of trying to not get caught,
Speaker 2: then yeah, you can't really spend the money very obviously.
Speaker 1: No, it's an intriguing thing, isn't it. Any form of
Speaker 1: prohibition creates these markets, and what we've got now is
Speaker 1: a giant version of the American prohibition experiment of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties a hundred years ago, which created essentially the
Speaker 1: modern mafia, the Five Families of New York, and they
Speaker 1: used to cheat each other with onions and tomatoes, lemons,
Speaker 1: you know, and stand over other Italian families or whatever.
Speaker 1: But after prohibition they became these massive international crime cartels.
Speaker 1: Prohibition did it for them. And what we've got now
Speaker 1: is not just American alcohol prohibition. What we've got now
Speaker 1: is a global prohibition of certain drugs which has created
Speaker 1: a global market. It's massive.
Speaker 2: And then if you look at Mexico, they had elections
Speaker 2: there on Dune the secondest a few weeks ago. Sixty
Speaker 2: two politicians were murdered in the lead up to that election.
Speaker 1: That is just that frightening.
Speaker 2: It's just a fraction that they announced the war on
Speaker 2: drugs in two thousand and six. There's been at least
Speaker 2: four hundred and forty thousand murders. There's one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten thousand people missing. Oh it's just so the body's
Speaker 2: never found.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why people go for holidays see personally,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, they say, well, if you stick
Speaker 1: to the good resorts and and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: which is fine. But if you've got a place where
Speaker 1: there are so many willing killers and so many guns
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, it must spill over into from
Speaker 1: time times of violence from time to time.
Speaker 2: Even accidentally, they're so called no go zones because the
Speaker 2: crooks like holiday and in the nice sunny spots too,
Speaker 2: they generally don't shoot people there. It's when you're in
Speaker 2: the country areas, on the on the farms and those
Speaker 2: type of places that's it gets done. But I just
Speaker 2: say this spillover. Last year there was a person and
Speaker 2: we don't know what trade they were involved in, but
Speaker 2: they were sitting down at a cafe we right in
Speaker 2: Mexico City and someone walks up and it's actually pretty clever,
Speaker 2: which in a macab sense of the word. They walked
Speaker 2: up as a couple, a man and a woman, and
Speaker 2: a woman comes up and says, hey, can I ask
Speaker 2: you for directions or something? And as he's distracted, go
Speaker 2: shoots in the back of the head. It was very cold,
Speaker 2: cold and it was all caught on CCTV. And the
Speaker 2: other thing which Australian needs to guard against his impunity
Speaker 2: because in Mexico, if you go and shoot somebody, even
Speaker 2: the killers who kill those Perth surfers, how much time
Speaker 2: have they spent in jail? How much time will they
Speaker 2: spend in jail? A lot of the time in Mexico,
Speaker 2: things just don't get to court, so there isn't any punishment.
Speaker 2: And that's why we really need to do our best
Speaker 2: to actually try and take the cash out of these criminals'
Speaker 2: hands so they don't get too powerful, that politicians aren't
Speaker 2: influenced by these cartails.
Speaker 1: Now, the final cocaine.
Speaker 2: Episode that is that is me knocking on that door.
Speaker 2: The cocaine episode is me going to that's the last,
Speaker 2: that's the last one. Bring it All home Coming and
Speaker 2: it's called bringing It Home. And in that episode though,
Speaker 2: we do speak to Matt Rippon, who is the Deputy
Speaker 2: CEO of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and he says
Speaker 2: in that episode that in his thirty years of policing,
Speaker 2: he's never seen more cocaine in Australia. Really, yes, thirty
Speaker 2: years the worst he's seen it.
Speaker 1: And what's the final word on cocaine in Australia.
Speaker 2: Well, we talked to Kirsty Schofield as well, she's the
Speaker 2: Assistant Commissioner at the AFP and she's in charge of
Speaker 2: Crime Command. And I asked the question, what do we do.
Speaker 2: Do we just give up? You say, hey, throw our
Speaker 2: hands in the air and say cocaine is too big,
Speaker 2: just can't stop it. And she's like, no, no, we
Speaker 2: have to actually try and keep putting pressure on these
Speaker 2: criminal groups and making it she says the words hostile,
Speaker 2: making it hostile, and then to operate, take their cash
Speaker 2: off and take their cars off them. She said that,
Speaker 2: you know, there's some people who've complained they don't care
Speaker 2: about going to jail, but just don't take my house.
Speaker 2: So they're worried about losing their assets because allegedly some
Speaker 2: people when they go inside jail, they still may be
Speaker 2: able to find a mobile phone. So if they need
Speaker 2: to move drugs, they can probably do it there. And
Speaker 2: they've got to be a time on their hands, a
Speaker 2: lot of thinking, a lot of phone calls, send out
Speaker 2: if you want that messages or perhaps signal messages.
Speaker 1: Even in Australia, squeaky clean place that it is. If
Speaker 1: a prisoner has enough money, probably they can get a
Speaker 1: few favors done.
Speaker 2: They probably can't or what if it's not money, Maybe
Speaker 2: the money buys them people on the out side of
Speaker 2: the tail to perhaps go and knock on a few
Speaker 2: prison guards doors all over the house and say, oh,
Speaker 2: I know your daughter goes to a zach sat Margaret's
Speaker 2: How's how's she going?
Speaker 1: No one is, And that's the point. So they can
Speaker 1: knock on your door, then knock.
Speaker 2: And it's so easy to find people. You know, you
Speaker 2: can't you can't stop against that. But if you can
Speaker 2: take the cash out of the big fish's hands, if
Speaker 2: you can catch them, then I'd rather see one hundred
Speaker 2: drug dealers with a million dollars in their pockets than
Speaker 2: one with a one hundred million dollars in their pocket.
Speaker 1: Yes, good point. Where can we find your podcast?
Speaker 2: So the best place to go and find it is
Speaker 2: with a subscription to The Herald's Son. Harold's Son is
Speaker 2: a great newspaper, the offices of which we are sitting
Speaker 2: in right now. So jump on that. It's in the
Speaker 2: Herald Sun app. You can also get it on Spotify
Speaker 2: and Apple, And on Apple it's on crime x which
Speaker 2: you can get access to a whole back catalog, which
Speaker 2: I would argue is better than Netflix of crime podcasts
Speaker 2: better than Netflix, better than Netflix should be our new matter.
Speaker 2: I think Netflix is overrated, to be honest, It's just
Speaker 2: it's struggled in the last few years. So I back
Speaker 2: in Crime.
Speaker 1: X Crime X is it. Thanks and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you another day when you have done another series.
Speaker 2: All pressures on now, Thanks Roller, Thank.
Speaker 1: You, thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday
Speaker 1: Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is
Speaker 1: Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to
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