Landscapers charged over $144m cocaine haul hidden in excavator
It’s the $144 million cocaine smuggling plot, featuring the eye-popping police X-ray picture of drug packages inside an excavator. And police allege two Canberra landscapers with financial problems are at the centre of it all.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Socialite thought he’d been ‘robbed’ as cops set coke trap
- Mohammed Skaf speaks out from jail: ‘I’m not a rapist’
With a failing landscaping business and mounting debts, police allege a pair of gardeners tried to dig themselves out of trouble by importing $144 million worth of cocaine hidden inside an excavator.
Their alleged plan was to smuggle 384kg of the drug inside the excavator from South Africa to Australia, according to documents tendered in Queanbeyan Local Court, where one of the pair was granted bail this month.
The impressive X-ray photo of the massive cocaine haul was big news when Timothy Engstrom, 35, and Adam Hunter, 35, were arrested earlier this year.
The haul has since been linked to the murder of a former South African soccer star, while other reports have suggested the drug was intended for the past season in the NSW ski fields.
Police were already listening in on Hunter’s calls on June 15, 2019. According to the court documents, Engstrom called and complained: “We got no cash, man. No money.”
MORE FROM BRENDEN HILLS:
Ibrahim associate: ‘I was directed to smuggle drugs’
How secret witness set trap for Mr Billionaire
Hunter allegedly replied that he would raid his kids’ bank accounts if their financial situation got any worse but added they would get through it.
The pair were co-owners of Bungendore Landscape Supplies, east of Canberra.
And, while Engstrom was taking bank loans to stay afloat, the pair was also at risk of losing a property deal if they didn’t come into some money soon, according to tapped phone calls that were included in the court documents.
Police allege the thing that would save them was the massive drug haul the pair were sweating on making it past Australian border authorities.
It didn’t. On June 4, police received a cargo report detailing a second-hand but fully refurbished 2008 CAT 320 Excavator.
When it arrived in Australia, officers from Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police cut open three hollowed cavities on the excavator’s hydraulic arm and found 384 blocks of cocaine, each weighting 1kg.
The officers replaced the drugs with a harmless substance in the same plastic wrapping and sent the excavator to its intended destination.
Police installed a secret camera in the Bungendore Landscape Supplies on King St, Bungendore, court documents said.
On July 11, police watched as Hunter and Engstrom “high-fived” when they successfully cut open a section of the digger’s hydraulic arm.
Hunter then allegedly removed one of the substituted blocks and dropped it in a tub on the scaffolding that had been set up next to the excavator.
At 11.07am, police entered the business premises and arrested both men.
The details emerged in Queanbeyan Local Court earlier this month where Engstrom was granted bail on the condition a family member lodge $500,000 as security and he abide by strict conditions, including not using encrypted messaging apps.
This came after Engstrom’s lawyer Paul McGirr argued his client never touched the substituted cocaine blocks, had no knowledge it was inside the excavator and was conducting a legitimate repair to the hydraulic arm.
Mr McGirr told the court the facts of the case amounted to his client attempting to obtain an excavator for legitimate business purposes.
“Much of the telephone intercept material insofar as it relates to Mr Engstrom is tenuous, speculative and has explanations equally consistent with his innocence,” Mr McGirr told the court.
One of those calls occurred on June 21 where Engstrom was recorded telling he would take his mother “somewhere real good” for her birthday dinner once his financial situation improved, the documents said.
Police allege this related to Engstrom earning money from the cocaine.
But Mr McGirr told the court all this pointed to was Engstrom “wanted to take his mother to a nice restaurant for her birthday”, which was “with great respect, hardly probative of a scheme to import $180 million of cocaine”.
The police arrests over the drug haul have been linked to the murder of former South African soccer star Marc Batchelor, 49.
Within 24 hours of the news of the July 14 seizure of the cocaine, Batchelor was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles as he was driving into his home at Olivedale, a suburb in the South African city of Johannesburg.
In July, The Daily Telegraph reported that local underworld sources in Johannesburg believed Batchelor was involved in the shipment.
Batchelor’s soccer career between 1990 and 2003 saw him play in the South African league for the Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, where he won four titles before switching to a television career.
Engstrom will return to court in January.