Trio guilty of trying to smuggle $160m worth of cocaine into Brisbane

THREE men are facing lengthy jail terms after a box of muesli bars, a bag of oranges, long life milk and two scribbled phone numbers brought undone a plot to smuggle $160 million worth of cocaine into Brisbane.

Facebook postings by Simon Golding and comments on the AFP site

A BOX of muesli bars, a bag of oranges, packs of long life milk and two scribbled phone numbers have brought undone a plot to smuggle 400kg of cocaine into Brisbane from South America.

Terrance Elfar, Simon Golding and Holger Sander are facing lengthy jail terms after being found guilty of importing a commercial quantity of the drug, worth $160 million, in 2010.

A jury, which went out on Tuesday, returned to a Brisbane courtroom just before 2.30pm today with guilty verdicts against Australians Terrance Elfar, 54, and Simon Golding, 46, and German national Holger Sander, 49.

Sander is a cult figure in Germany’s skating scene.

After the verdict Elfar said: “I believe this trial was totally unfair. That’s my opinion, your honour.

“I think the trial was totally biased and full of nondisclosure. I can’t wait until the corruption of the AFP and Customs comes out,” Golding said.

Justice Ros Atkinson, who will sentence the men tomorrow, advised people in the courtroom to treat their comments with “a grain of salt”.

Terrance Elfar, left, said he believed the trial was “totally unfair”.

Each of the men had pleaded not guilty. They did not give evidence at their trial, which lasted just under three weeks before the jury retired.

The discovery of the distinctively branded Uncle Tobys bars, South Australian navel oranges and Devondale milk on a catamaran called Edelweiss, crewed by German Holger Sander, helped convince a Supreme Court jury to convict the men of importing the illicit drugs in October 2010.

The jury found that Sander’s catamaran set sail from Panama in Central America on August 3, 2010, laden with drugs.

It sailed south to Ecuador then across the Pacific to meet with a yacht crewed by Golding and Elfar at a point 320 miles offshore from Brisbane.

Golding and Elfar had set sail on October 5 from Port Macquarie on the NSW mid north-coast aboard the yacht that was usually moored at Burraneer Bay in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

AFP and Customs officers board the yacht moored at the Scarborough Marina, north of Brisbane.

The jury found that Sander had arranged the rendezvous via satellite phone, using a satellite phone number inside his logbook which was labelled “Simon”.

Sander’s crewmate, Costa Rican national Roberto Serna, also kept a scrap of paper inside his wallet with the name “Simon” and the same satellite phone number written on it.

Sander and Serna shifted the drugs — carefully wrapped in black and brown tape in cubes of 10 1kg packages — onto Elfar’s yacht, Mayhem, of Eden, at around 9pm on October 8, so that Elfar and Golding could complete the final leg into Scarborough marina north of Brisbane.

Unbeknown to them, a Customs surveillance plane was watching the two boats.

Four days later when the 52 foot Beneteau yacht docked, AFP agents watched Golding and Elfar come ashore on their small tender with 45kg of the drugs hidden in two military-style olive green waterproof duffel bags.

Facebook posts by Simon Golding.

The pair loaded the bags in a taxi and headed for a shopping centre in nearby Kippa-Ring, leaving a further 355kg of cocaine on board the Mayhem of Eden in its two cabins.

Several 10kg cubes of cocaine were laying on a bunk in the port astern cabin, while in the cabin beneath the bow there were six more bags of the drug.

Golding was arrested at a suburban intersection in Redcliffe about an hour after he left the shopping centre in a hired Toyota Corolla with an accomplice, Geoff Triplett.

The next day a huge 347 foot Customs ship intercepted the Edelweiss at sea and detained Sander and Serna.

The two men were brought back to Brisbane on the Ocean Protector ship, and the Edelweiss was towed back, arriving two days later.

Holger Sander and crewmate Roberto Serna were brought back to Brisbane on customs ship Ocean Protector.

When analysts examined the drugs found in the hire car and on board the Mayhem of Eden, they learned the 400kg was made up of 283kg of pure cocaine.

The commercial quantity of the drug is just 2kg.

The maximum jail term for importing the drug is life in prison.

Zali Burrows, lawyer for Golding and Elfar, said the verdicts were quite unexpected, her clients were “quite disappointed” and they would be appealing.

“They are not going to accept the verdict. They maintain their innocence,” Ms Burrows said.

She said despite facing jail sentences of 20 years to life imprisonment, the two men were in good spirits and were quite confident of succeeding in their appeal.