How a six month delay and a leaky boat sank a drug trafficker

A six month delay in South America and a leaky boat sank a drug trafficker’s plan to bring cocaine into Australia. Now an Adelaide man has been jailed for nine years for the botched conspiracy.

An Adelaide man whose plan to import enough cocaine to set him up for life, only for a leaky boat in South America and a six month delay to ruin his plans, has been sentenced to more than nine years in prison.

Ibrahm Halil Yavuz pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import a large commercial quantity of cocaine into Australia as part of a convoluted plan in 2014.

He and another co-accused found a courier in may 2014 and bought him a ticket to Panama City where he was supposed to organise the boat, secure the cocaine and begin the long trip back to Australia.

Yavuz and the courier even attended a Flight Centre outlet in the northern suburbs so the courier could be shown on a map of the world his route back to Australia via New Zealand.

The courier was to be paid between $200,000 and $250,000 for his role in the conspiracy.

But the plan started to fall apart when the courier arrived in Panama in late May.

Over the course of a week Yavuz and the courier exchanged move than 160 phone calls and text messages as they scrambled to get the plan together.

On May 28, the courier called to say the boat was in poor condition and wouldn’t be ready for another six months.

After trying to find a solution to the problem Yavuz returned to the same Flight Centre to book the courier a ticket home.

The amount of cocaine to be imported back to Australia was never proved, however District Court Judge Jo-Anne Deuter concluded that it was more than the 2kg which Yavuz claimed.

She pointed to the need for a boat to transport the illicit substances, as well as the street value of the drug, which, in 2014, was between $185,000 and $240,000 per kilo in the eastern states, as evidence that amount was closer to the alleged 75kg put forward by the prosecution.

On Thursday, District Court Judge Jo-Anne Deuter said that while conspiring to import the cocaine, Yavuz had also been running a large cannabis syndicate which was shipping drugs to Perth.

For that offending he was sentenced to six years and six months in prison with the sentence due to expire in January next year.

For this crime he was sentence to nine years and six months in prison with a six year, six month non-parole period.