Ironside accused Damian Stavreas bail application rejected

Police say an alleged mid-level bikie dealer was just three weeks into parole on a near decade-long prison sentence when he started trafficking almost 8.5kg of meth.

An alleged Comanchero mid-level meth distributor busted as part of Operation Ironside co-ordinated his network of dealing around his parole conditions, a court has heard.

Damian Stavreas, 36, on Wednesday asked the Adelaide Magistrates Court for release on bail to be home for the birth of his child, due early next month.

A police prosecutor told the court Stavreas, of Brooklyn Park, was allegedly involved with trafficking between eight and eight-and-a-half kilograms of meth and had laundered $663,950 over about eight months.

The prosecutor told the court Stavreas had been released on parole from an almost 10-year prison sentence just three weeks before he allegedly became a “mid-level” cog in a drug trafficking ring, acting as a middle man between “senior people” and distributors.

The court heard Stavreas was jailed in 2015 for nine-years and seven-months for drug and firearm offences committed while on bail.

Damian Stavreas was arrested as part of Operation Ironside and charged with more than 70 drug and money laundering offences. Picture: Facebook

He was granted parole in November 2020, and within three weeks allegedly began his offending.

“Stavreas spoke to others using his AN0M devices about his parole obligations,” the prosecutor said.

“(He spoke) about signing in, about his movements and he was making his arrangements to participate in the drug trafficking organisation around his parole commitments.”

The court was told Stavreas, who has “Comanchero” and “1%er” tattooed on him, was a “committed” member of the outlaw motorcycle gang “to the point of having it inked into his body”.

He was arrested in April, 2022, charged with 39 counts of drug trafficking meth – including 10 of trafficking in a commercial quantity – and 35 counts of money laundering.

Court documents showed those allegations spread across Adelaide and included Enfield, Tranmere, Firle, Kilburn, Ridleyton, Magill, Mansfield Park, Rostrevor, Welland, Klemzig, Burton, Beverly and West Croydon.

Meanwhile, a nation-leading Ironside test case continues in the Supreme Court to test the validity of the ANOM evidence.

Counsel for Stavreas referred to that case, and the possibility the evidence relied on by the prosecution might be “defective” and that their “entire case could collapse”.

“There is a doubtful cloak over all of these text messages (evidence),” he said.

“There’s a very real risk the backbone of this case is built upon illegally obtained evidence.”

Despite Stavreas’s father-in-law offering a $20,000-30,000 cash surety to see him released on bail, Magistrate Karim Soetratma was not moved.

He refused bail and declined to order a home detention report.

Stavreas will next face court in November.