Yacht trio face jailed over cocaine haul

THREE men who “brazenly” smuggled cocaine with a street value of up to $240 million to Brisbane from South America have each been sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

AFP and Customs officers board the yacht moored at the Scarborough Marina.

THREE men who “brazenly” smuggled cocaine with a street value of up to $240 million to Brisbane from South America have each been sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

Shortly after 4pm, Supreme Court Justice Roslyn Atkinson sentenced Simon Golding, 46, Terrance Elfar, 54, and Holger Sander, 49, saying they were motivated by pure greed.

Elfar, a plumber and the skipper of the yacht Mayhem of Eden, was given the harshest non-parole period. When time serve is taken into account, he will be 71 years old when he is eligible for release.

Golding will be 62 when he is eligible for release while German former skateboarding champion Sander will be eligible for release in 11 years because he has already served nearly five years in jail.

Last month a jury convicted the trio of importing 400kg of the drug on a yacht to Scarborough marina north of Brisbane in October 2010.

It was one of the largest cocaine importations at that time, only eclipsed by a one-tonne haul smuggled to a remote part of the Western Australian coast in 2001 and hidden in sand dunes.

The court was told a fourth offender, a Costa Rican national who was a crewmate of Sander, was sentenced to 25 years jail with a non parole period of 15 years.

Simon Golding.

Terrance Elfar,

Gilberto Aristizabal Serna pleaded guilty two years ago and made admissions to authorities about his role.

Crown Prosecutor Glen Rice QC told the court that Golding, Elfar and Sander had shown no remorse and deserved at least the same sentence given to Serna, if not more.

Mr Rice said the smuggling of the drugs to Australia, initially on Sander’s catamaran then on Elfar’s yacht Mayhem of Eden was “incredibly brazen”.

Mr Rice said it was fair to assume the trio were motivated to take part in the risky criminal conspiracy out of greed, as Serna had revealed he was promised $500,000.

The trio were likely expecting a similar payday, he said.

The 400kg of drugs were carefully wrapped in black and brown tape in cubes of 10 one kilogram packages and were loaded on Sander’s catamaran Edelweiss in South America in August 2010.

After a two-month long sailing voyage across the Pacific, Sander handed over the drugs to Elfar and Golding on October 8 at a point in the ocean 320 miles offshore from Brisbane.

The court was told that the weather was so rough during Mayhem of Eden’s voyage that they nearly needed to make a distress call.

Unbeknown to them, a police boat called Nemesis tracked Elfar and Golding as they sailed toward Brisbane.

A Royal Australian Air Force plane and also watched them from above.

A huge Customs ship also watched them on their radar.

All of the men have already served a substantial length of time behind bars awaiting trial.

Sander has been in custody for 1800 days, Elfar for 891 days and Golding for 468 days.

Golding was arrested at a suburban intersection in Redcliffe just hours after he left the Scarborough marina with 45kg of cocaine in the boot of a taxi.

He was a passenger in a rented Toyota Corolla driven by an accomplice who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Mr Rice said the evidence suggested Golding and the other man were planning on taking the cocaine and “burying” it.

He said a “brand new shovel” and “night vision equipment” were found in a suitcase in the back seat of the hire car.

He said the drugs would likely be buried “until required” for sale.

Justice Atkinson told the court that the men may also have been taking “a sample” to a buyer so they could “show what they had”.

Justice Atkinson said Elfar’s conduct during the trial showed he had “almost a sense of entitlement”.

Mr Rice said Elfar came across as “self centred” and portrayed himself “as a victim in the process when in fact he is a perpetrator of a major crime”.

Elfar represented himself in the sentencing proceedings. He made what Justice Atkinson described as an “angry” speech to the court, accusing her of bias and complaining of a lack of deodorant while in custody.