Canadian busted at Aussie border allegedly had 15 kilos of meth

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Another Canadian has been busted at the border in Australia, caught at an airport allegedly trying to smuggle high-value meth into the drug-hungry country.

A 38-year-old Canadian man arriving at Sydney international airport on a flight from Vancouver had his luggage searched by Australian Border Force officers, police said. He had a black, hard-shell suitcase, an Under Armour duffle and a plush wrap-around neck rest.

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When officers opened the black suitcase, the content was covered by a grey towel. Underneath the towel, were rows of plastic Ziplock bags filled with an off-white substance. There appeared to be laundry dryer sheets intermingled with the bags, likely to try to mask the odour.

Testing confirmed it to be methamphetamine weighing 15 kilograms, Australian Federal Police said. Police say it could have been sold as about 150,000 individual hits on the streets of Australia, where meth remains a high-demand drug.

Police did not give an estimated value on the load, but a seizure made in late July of almost the same size (14.4 kilograms) from a Canadian woman arriving at Brisbane airport was given a street value of about $12 million

The man was arrested in Sydney on July 31 — three days after that Canadian woman was busted in Brisbane — but the seizure was not announced until Wednesday, corresponding with a scheduled appearance in court.

It is not known if the arrests are related.

The man, who was not named by police, is charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug, which has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, although actual sentences usually run much lower.

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He first appeared in court on Aug. 1, when he was refused bail.

“Criminal groups will go to any lengths to bring illicit substances into our country,” AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Dom Stephenson said in a written release. “The devastating impact methamphetamine has on individuals and their families is well known — that’s why we’re committed to stopping it whenever we can.

ABF Superintendent Elke West called the barely hidden effort to smuggle the drugs over 12,500 kilometres and across two borders a brazen attempt and hinted there could have been a Canadian tip-off to help focus their search.

“Criminal syndicates only think about their profit margins, not about the potential harm these dangerous drugs cause to the community,” West said. “ABF officers will continue to act on shared agency intelligence, passenger behaviour, and officer intuition to intercept attempted drug importations and disrupt these network’s supply chains.”

Canadians and Canada feature prominently as a source for illegal drugs entering Australia, where demand is high pushing street prices up, much higher than in Canada, giving incentive for criminal gangs to expend the resources and take the risk of the trans-Pacific travel.

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In the case of the Canadian woman, more effort was put into trying to thwart detection of the meth; it was encased in plastic and wrapped in towels soaked in vinegar and layered with coffee beans.

The largest seizures — loads by the tonne — come by sea, hidden in regular commercial cargo from the Port of Vancouver by organized crime groups, as shown earlier this year in an investigation by Postmedia.

The biggest Canadian connection is the allegations against Tse Chi Lop, a Canadian accused of running a vast meth empire worth billions of dollars. He is accused of being one of world’s biggest drug kingpins and dubbed “Asia’s El Chapo,” referring to the founder of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel. The former Toronto man is facing trial in Australia.

In November, a Canadian man was sentenced in Australia to 18 and a half years in prison for trying to smuggle $15 million worth of meth. In the summer of 2023, nearly $50 million worth of meth was found inside  sent from Canada to Sydney.

That May, a Canadian was also sentenced to 11 years in prison in Australia for quantities of meth found in commercial dough mixers shipped from Toronto to both Melbourne and Sydney.

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The previous year, Australian authorities announced the country’s largest known fentanyl shipment arrived from Canada hidden in an industrial lathe shipped from Vancouver. Large loads of cocaine and meth, worth an estimated $135 million, were also found hidden inside a vintage Bentley luxury sedan sent in a shipping container from Canada to Sydney.

In 2017, a National Post investigation revealed that a Vice Media editor recruited interns, models and musicians into an international cocaine smuggling ring. Five of his recruits were caught at Sydney airport with almost 40 kilos of cocaine and sentenced to prison in Australia.

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