Olympic medallist Nathan Baggaley wins right to retrial over alleged role in $200m cocaine plot

Former Olympic kayaker Nathan Baggaley has won his appeal against a jury’s guilty verdict over an alleged plot to smuggle $200m worth of cocaine into Australia. Here’s what happens now.

Former Olympic kayaker Nathan Baggaley has won his appeal to have a jury’s guilty verdict over a plot to smuggle $200m worth of cocaine into Australia set aside. Picture: AAP Image/Julian Smith, file

Former Olympic kayaker Nathan Baggaley has won his appeal with the state’s highest court setting aside a jury’s guilty verdict in a plot to smuggle $200m worth of cocaine into Australia.

In the Court of Appeal in Brisbane on Friday, Justice David Boddice said he would allow the appeal and ordered Baggaley face a retrial.

His younger brother Dru, convicted of the same charge at a joint trial, is also awaiting retrial after his conviction was set aside in December.

The court’s reasons in Nathan’s case will be published at a later date.

At a trial in 2021 Nathan and Dru pleaded not guilty to attempting to import a commercial quantity of cocaine into Australia in Coolangatta and elsewhere between December 16, 2017 and August 2, 2018.

Dru was arrested at sea on July 31, 2018 by Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) police officers who boarded the rigid hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) on which he was a passenger.

Australian Nathan Baggaley in action at the Athens Olympic Game. Picture: AFP

He had earlier been caught on video taken by a Royal Australian Navy ship tossing packages containing cocaine overboard.

At trial he said he thought the packages contained tobacco.

Dru picked them up from a foreign container ship that dropped them into the sea 360km offshore.

At trial prosecutors alleged Nathan had a “key role” in aiding Dru’s attempted cocaine importation by buying the powerful $106,700 boat, a $7000 navigation system and a satellite phone, and was waiting at Brunswick Heads boat ramp in northern NSW ready to receive the drugs on their return to shore.

Meanwhile in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on Friday, brother Dru Baggaley’s part heard bail application was adjourned by Justice Melanie Hindman to resume in court on Monday.

During the application which began on March 18, Dru Baggaley’s lawyer told the court that his client had been charged last week over the alleged contraband prison phone, and his father Noel had put up $500,000 surety to secure his release on bail on the cocaine smuggling charge.

The court heard Dru Baggaley was in prison in Rockhampton.

In December the state’s highest court set aside Dru Baggaley’s conviction for attempting to smuggle cocaine into Australia and ordered he face a retrial.

The Court of Appeal ruled that Baggaley was a victim of a miscarriage of justice because his defence failed to lead his “exculpatory version of events” at trial in relation to a mobile phone that prosecutors alleged belonged to the former Coolangatta fishmonger and oyster farmer.