Vietnamese crime gangs’ cannabis superhighway to South Australia
Vietnamese crime lords now control massive cannabis “igloos” in South Australia, with profits used to buy ice and cocaine from global Chinese Triads. WATCH THE VIDEO
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Exclusive investigation: Along the Sturt Highway from the South Australian and Victorian border, joining up with the Hume Highway, various NSW police command patrols would just wait for the vans and cars to drive by.
Young constables were told, if drivers look at them, ignore those but randomly pull over and search the boots of the drivers who didn’t look at them as they were more likely to have something to hide.
The rule of thumb would expose what the Australian Crime Commission would later detail as high quality cannabis trafficking from source plantations in South Australia to east coast capitals in a national drug conspiracy that lasted for the best part of two decades that saw the likes of the Yass Highway Patrol became one of the most successful in the country for random vehicle drug trafficking busts.
But that was then, now “igloos” the size of an Olympic swimming pools filled with thousands of cannabis plants are seeing record busts and arrests in Northern NSW, Queensland and Victoria in a national distribution program that extends along the whole eastern seaboard from Mackay all the way to Melbourne, funding greater national criminal enterprise.
Huge plantation are being found now regularly particularly along the NSW-Queensland border now the Warrego, Leichhardt and Mount Lindesay Highways are the focus.
“SA is still happening but when you have the likes of Vietnamese in Queensland and here in NSW setting up these igloos, they are cultivating enormous amount of cannabis … that is being shipped up and down the country,” NSW Organised Crime Squad commander Detective Superintendent Martin Fileman told News Corp Australia.
“The biggest issue we’ve all got is Vietnamese organised crime.”
And at the top of the cannabis network sit a Vietnamese kingpin in each state co-ordinating the lot and linking with Chinese criminals to launder their money to be reinvested into out trafficked imports including cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamines and precursor drugs.
Det Supt Fileman said giant sophisticated “igloo” cannabis greenhouses, each carried an average of 4000 plants worth $2000 each so each one was worth $8 million and some properties had multiple igloos.
The king pins, who have been identified by police and honed their criminality over decades of running grow hydroponic crops in rental houses, never go near the $60,000 to set up igloos, instead tasking a manager each to run who in turn bring in illegal workers to operate.
“They are very well hidden, they don’t live in the exclusive areas, they generally have someone running Queensland and someone in NSW, one big person in each state but they are interconnected,” he said.
“They are businessmen, legitimate Vietnamese organised crime groups … they will then utilise the funds to put back into organised crime or they will make this illegitimate money legitimate through different processes of laundering either going to the casino or other laundering schemes. They utilise money remitters but they generally stay as a closed group. But the Chinese are the ones now being utilised by other organised crime, who aren’t generally part of the same cultural background, to remit the money.
“On the economy side of things they can get so much more money out of an igloo than say renting 15 houses to spread your plants out. They operate this as a business.”
In June, Drugs and Firearms Squad detectives seized $22 million worth of cannabis and charged four people about Lismore area after an eight-month investigation. But that one operation led to another eight arrests and saw another $20 million worth of crops smashed.
Earlier this month police charged five people in one operation with six properties raided in Victoria and Queensland in what Queensland police said was a six month operation to dismantle a national cannabis distribution network. In all, $2.3 million worth of cannabis was seized as well as more than $240,000 in cash.
“This group had the capability to transport a significant amount of drugs across Queensland, Victoria and WA, but these arrests prove that offenders will always be caught, no matter how sophisticated they think their operations are,” Qld Police Drug and Serious Crime Group’s Detective Superintendent Col Briggs said, adding COVID restrictions had not stopped the syndicates nor police.
In the previous month, Queensland police made a further unrelated six large scale cannabis busts involving suspects also from Victoria and NSW.
“The reason they are doing it a lot of the time is that yes there is money to be made but they are utilising these funds to put into other ventures in organised crime and we’ve seen the Vietnamese now dabbling in clandestine laboratories so they are utilising this money to import precursors or import illicit substances such as pseudoephedrine to use in manufacturing methamphetamine. So a lot of time even though they are utilising these illegitimate funds and making them legitimate, a lot of the time this money goes straight into facilitating importation of illicit drugs and precursors.
“There is still an enormous amount of money to be made from cultivation to be funded back into their lifestyle or use that money to then put back in to other organised crime ventures such as the importation of illicit substances.”
MORE NEWS:
Deadly online craze entrapping Aussie women
Where the next wave of Aussie jobs will be
How to get up to $1200 back from the NBN
Originally published as Vietnamese crime gangs’ cannabis superhighway to South Australia