The inside story of Australia’s biggest drug bust

IT was an investigation that would take two and a half years, hundreds of hours of physical surveillance and would result in a $360 million drug bust, the biggest in Australia. READ THE INSIDE STORY

AFP Detective Sergeant Paul Watt. Pic: Adam Yip Australian police unveil massive cocaine bust

• HIGH LIVES OF ACCUSED DRUG SMUGGLERS

It was late on a Friday afternoon when the phone rang in the Parramatta office of the NSW Drug Squad.

Police Detective Chief Inspector Jason Smith picked up the handset and listened intently as a colleague feverishly explained a wild tip-off he had received about a suspicious south coast fisherman who was planning to import drugs on trawlers.

When Smith hung up the phone, he knew in his gut that he had to look into it.

AFP Detective Sergeant Paul Watt. Picture: Adam Yip/ Daily Telegraph

“My colleague has given us some wild tips before but something about this information told me it had some legs,” he explains to The Saturday Telegraph.

“I got one of my detectives to head out and start digging around, and the more we dug, the more we found,” he says.

After a few weeks of digging they realised the group they were watching were big fish, but they never envisioned that they would eventually take down the biggest alleged cocaine syndicate in Australian history.

But this was a group so technologically savvy — allegedly using encrypted BlackBerries at $2500 a pop — that NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police needed to join forces.

It was an investigation that would take another 2½ years, and hundreds of hours of physical surveillance combined with 24/7 phone monitoring.

NSW Police Detective Chief Inspector Jason Smith. Picture: Toby Zerna

Up to 20 fulltime officers attached to Operation Okesi worked around the clock at an enormous personal toll because members of the alleged syndicate would arrange meetings almost every weekend as they spoke about their drug smuggling plans at cafes and parks across Sydney.

More than 100 meetings were monitored and police will allege most involved Ulladulla fishing boss Joseph “Joe” Pirrello, who was the common link between all 15 members of the syndicate.

The job even took some detectives to Fiji and Tahiti.

AFP Detective Sergeant Paul Watt said the team of officers was relentless in their surveillance, which was tense work, especially when within metres of their targets.

“There are times when every officer at some stage thinks they’ve been burnt — you just act like you’ve got a reason to be where you are,” he says.

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HIGH LIVES OF ACCUSED DRUG SMUGGLERS

Some of his undercover operatives would dress in different ways, pretend to meet friends for coffee or even lie down on park benches with newspapers over their faces.

“You can’t have men in suits walking around the Fish Market. Everyone there knows everyone and it is a hard place to operate,” he says.

Watt chuckles as he recalls one of his colleagues’ attempts at trying to “fit in” at Brooklyn, a town on the Hawkesbury River just north of Sydney.

“At one stage one of the guys tried to maintain cover by holding a fishing rod and was standing there and clearly had no idea how to use it.

The cocaine ring were allegedly using fishing trawlers to move cocaine from South America to Australia. Source: Police Media

“He cast the bait and hook, but he had cast it onto a nearby wharf and then his offsider said to him, ‘You are not going to catch much up there.’

“But the guys did a terrific job, they really did.”

Smith agrees that the work was relentless and explains police officers missed birthdays, family functions, and kids’ sports.

He missed the last opportunity to see his mother before she died because he was sitting at the Marine Area Command watching as members of the group allegedly drove boats from Sydney Fish Market to meet a “mother ship” that would hand over the drugs from South America.

Eastern Suburbs businessman Darren Mohr is escorted away by police.

“There have been a lot of twists and turns and challenges, but I have to praise the tenacity of the team who often scrambled to get to last-minute meetings and created their own luck by going the extra mile,” Smith says.

And more than 100 officers from NSW Police, AFP and Australian Border Force missed out on Christmas celebrations when the alleged drug ring decided to finally bring 500kg of cocaine ashore at Parsley Bay, Brooklyn, in the dead of the night.

One of fifteen men being arrested in the operation. Pic: AAP Image/Australian Federal Police

On the night that the alleged ring was smashed Australian Border Force played a major role and Wing Commander Vic Pisani says his staff provided critical information to the investigation.

“We pretty much keep a picture of what’s going on at sea — we provided surveillance, we have aircraft and patrol vessels and information from regional countries, other partner agencies,” he says.

“We assist in the police effort and give it that maritime dimension.”

The total haul intercepted during the investigation is 1.1 tonnes of cocaine and 32kg of heroin worth more than $370 million.

Police detail accused drug smugglers aboard a fishing vessel.

Now 15 men are before the courts charged with their varying roles in the alleged ring.

In addition to the Christmas and Boxing Day arrests police will allege the group was responsible for another four conspiracies to import commercial quantities of drugs — all of which were foiled.

Watt and Smith both say their teams have been the butt of many jokes over the past few years because they were biding their time before making any arrests.

But those involved have enjoyed cracking a few beers, finally explaining the details to their families and brainstorming headlines they believe should have been used in the Australian media.