Former top cop Mark Standen to be granted parole, authorities fear he will have a target on his back

Former crime-buster Mark Standen is set to be released from jail after 16 years in protective custody, but authorities fear the disgraced ex-cop will walk with a target on his back.

EXCLUSIVE

Disgraced former top cop Mark Standen is set to be granted parole after 16 years in jail but authorities fear he will walk with a target on his back, from the criminal underbelly he once helped smash.

Standen was a NSW Crime Commission assistant director in June 2008 before his stunning arrest for his role in a $120 million drug plot involving the world’s biggest synthetic drugs cartel.

He was handed a 22-year jail sentence with a non-parole period of 16 years, which is up next June at Sydney’s Long Bay maximum security prison.

Sources have confirmed parole will not be opposed.

Former Assistant Director NSW Crime Commission Mark Standen being driven to Central Local Court in 2008, when he was charged with conspiring to import $120M worth of drugs.

He was deemed a “high risk” prisoner in jail and now apparently on release too where he will be given more than a dozen strict conditions, critical of which will be not consorting with those involved in his drug plot or other criminal network identities.

But he might not have that choice.

Authorities have privately flagged fears the now 66-year-old Standen will be a target particularly from the East Coast Criminal Milieu, a loose network of identities which has for more than three decades under different leaders, run the bulk multimillion-dollar cocaine imports into Australia.

Media wait for Mark Standen at the rear entrance of the NSW Supreme Court in 2011.

They are not necessarily seeking revenge but there are fears key identities want his encyclopaedic knowledge of Australia’s underbelly, the identity of informants, how police operate and insider workings of some of the most sensitive undercover operations in the country.

At his trial, the court was told Standen had been a law enforcer for three decades including with the Australian Federal Police and his “knowledge and experience is extensive” particularly into some of Australia’s most complex multinational narcotics investigations.

These investigations involved a long list of informants he handled and sensitive transnational intelligence from the AFP, Interpol, the United States FBI and DEA and Britain’s SOCA to list a few.

Australian Federal Police officers went to the Netherlands as part of the investigation.

“It’s been 16 years and if you were applying for a life insurance policy I’d hate to be the insurer,” one law enforcer familiar with the Standen matter said.

“He will be a target. That’s the nature of the game. They (criminals) have long memories and a lot of people he dealt with were half his age and so they are still young. As a general rule, anyone who he has worked on would want details of anything he knows about their job, what informants gave them up, what they missed, how they got onto it. They’d be wanting to know especially who gave them up.

“If he was a Crown witness, which he is not, he would be protected, given a new ID and that would be that he would be squirrelled away somewhere but he doesn’t fall into that category, he is on his own … he is in a very, very difficult position, for one thing he has got no money.”

The Dutch police station where Mark Standen’s drug conspiracy was uncovered. Picture: Charles Miranda

Another former law enforcer who knows Standen said his focus as a criminal investigator was Anglo-based large-scale drug syndicates and obsession with characters like one-time ‘Mr Big’ Mick Hurley, who died in custody in 2007.

“There are still people out there who would want to know who his informants were. As a crime investigator he was involved in so many cases, had that knowledge base whether it was cocaine coming in through airports and baggage handlers through to parasite smuggling (attaching drug hauls to hulls of cargo ships). He looked after some, he gave others up, he would be looking over his shoulder for sure.”

Standen has reportedly completed a law degree in jail and apparently been studying Chinese although it is not clear why.

State and federal authorities would not discuss the case. A spokesman for the Attorney- General’s Department just confirmed he would be considered for Commonwealth parole on June 1, 2024.

Mark Standen, concealed under a blue blanket, on the day of his arrest.

Wiretap that brought down disgraced cop Mark Standen

Mark William Standen was the NSW Crime Commission assistant director (investigations) at the time of his arrest on June 2, 2008.

He had spent three decades as a law enforcer including time with the Australian Federal Police and at the time was deemed one of the best criminal investigators in Australia.

His arrest came after Dutch police on unrelated criminal wiretaps identified a “crooked hat” (bent cop) in Australia that was allegedly helping a powerful Netherlands-based drugs and money laundering cartel, known as the Haklander Syndicate or Breda Group.

Within their ranks were multi-millionaires, an international champion poker player, an Olympic athlete, a Dutch police officer and some of Europe’s most notorious and connected criminals from Spain, the UK, Germany and Portugal with known criminal associates in the US and Dubai.

James Kinch (centre) was extradited from Thailand to Australia. Picture: Supplied

One of the principals of the group was British-Irish dual national James Henry Kinch who between 2001 and 2003 facilitated three ecstasy haul imports of a total of 1.1 metric tonnes worth more than $200 million into Australia for national distribution, notably into Sydney then onto Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Kinch was arrested in Sydney and charged by NSW Police but the NSW Crime Commission wanted to roll the infamous international organised crime figure.

All charges against him were withdrawn in 2004 as he became a registered informant with Mark Standen as his handler. He flew home to Holland but by 2005 his relationship with Standen changed

Phone and computer taps showed Standen was being paid huge sums to become the eyes and ears for the cartel keen to expand enterprise into Australia.

Bakhos "Bill" Jalalaty of BJ's Fine Foods, photographed in 2002.

Standen then linked with a local Sydney businessman Bill Jalalaty – whose wife had previously worked with Standen at the AFP – and the pair with Kinch plotted to traffic a drug precursor into Australia in a consignment of rice from Pakistan, via Jalalaty’s legitimate food import business.

The haul was “ripped” by another criminal entity but would have been enough to make $120 million worth of ice or speed.

On December 8, 2011 Standen was sentenced to 22 years (16 years non-parole) after being found guilty by the NSW Supreme Court of conspiring to import 300kg of pseudoephedrine as well as taking part in the supply of the substance and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Jalalaty and Kinch were also jailed, Kinch was extradited from a Bangkok jail to Australia and is due out of jail in February 2024, when he will then be deported to the UK.

Originally published as Former top cop Mark Standen to be granted parole, authorities fear he will have a target on his back