A recent investigation revealed that drug cartels are utilizing an oceanic superhighway, targeting the Port of Newcastle, Australia's largest coal port, to smuggle cocaine into the country. The operation involved Norwegian divers using high-tech submersibles to retrieve kilograms of cocaine hidden on the hull of a ship. The story details how police intercepted the operation thanks to an anonymous tip and the vigilance of a ferry master, resulting in the arrest of two divers.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.It was a crisp January morning when two drug cartel divers, dressed in full black wetsuits and hoods, plunged into the black water of the Hunter River and motored quietly toward a freighter in the Newcastle Harbour using spy-like submersibles.
So it was with the 2023 operation involving the 228-metre red and black bulk carrier Stalo, flying the Cypriot flag, waiting to berth in Newcastle, according to agreed court documents in one case from November.The bulk carrier Stalo had 80 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the sea chest on its hull when it sailed into Newcastle in January 2023.
The divers, refusing to reply to the ferry master’s calls, swam to the shore and clambered up, dropping diving equipment as they fled. “With 12 billion tonnes of shipping moved around the world, we are talking thousands and thousands of cargo ships that are just specks in the ocean,” Dr Hurley said. “It’s clear from what we’re seeing and hearing around the world that organised crime groups are using more and more,” Acting ABF Commander Graeme Campbell told the“Australia is a hugely attractive market for transnational serious organised criminal syndicates looking to import illegal drugs, and it is safe to say it will be well into the future.”
Blee spent thousands of dollars at businesses across Newcastle, kitting them out for the mission in April 2022, according to a police fact sheet released after Blee’s sentencing. The water was icy at midnight when the cartel recruits dove in at Stockton for the 50-minute underwater scooter trip toward the Areti.
In November, Blee was sentenced to a seven-and-a-half-year non-parole period for drug importation and people smuggling but was initially charged with manslaughter over Martins’ death. “How deep they have to dive?” Lee allegedly asked during one conversation, which took place on AN0M, an encrypted communications app secretly controlled by the FBI in a global organised crime sting that led to hundreds of arrests around the world.
The alleged plot came unstuck when Belgian customs officials in Ghent allegedly discovered the drugs in a sea chest attached to the boat’s hull, court documents obtained by this masthead say. Cartels first took to the waves in the 1980s by strapping massive engines to speed boats to outrun the coastguard as they imported cocaine from Central America into the US.
DRUG CARTEL AUSTRALIA NEWCASTLE COCAINE SUBMARINES SHIPPING CRIME
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