Damion Flower’s secret double life as a cocaine kingpin revealed

While Damion Flower was pictured trackside with winning horses for racing and society pages, police were secretly photographing him picking up bags of cocaine worth millions of dollars.

It would take two decades before Damion Flower, champion teenage surfer who evolved into racing royalty, would be exposed as one of the country’s biggest drug smugglers.

His stunning double life as horse owner and cocaine kingpin can finally be revealed after he today pleaded guilty to importing cocaine using a network of baggage handlers at Sydney Airport.

Racehorse Snitzel ridden by jockey Glen Boss is led back to scale by owner Damion Flower.

Following Flower’s arrest, police seized approximately $8 million in cash.

Courts have been told there was a total of 228 kgs of pure cocaine brought in between June 2016 and May 2019.

Emboldened by years of getting away with it, at the height of his operation, Flower was smuggling a staggering 25 kgs of cocaine a week with a street value of $4 million a time.

Flower with trainer Gerald Ryan. Picture: Tim Marsden

A former part-time baggage handler himself, the 48-year-old father-of-two had been on the police radar all that time but the cops were never able to get enough on him.

In the close-knit racing industry, people had their suspicions about where his overnight millions had come from but the rumours were dismissed as he was never charged. They figured their mate must be legitimate.

“There had been talk for ever really,” one contact said.

“But he was such a good man, he appeared to be.”

As a champion surfer, Flower broke his leg on muck-up day.

With his wife Camilla on his arm, he owned horses with the likes of broadcaster Alan Jones and rugby league coach Phil Gould. There is no suggestion any of them knew of Flower’s drug smuggling.

But both NSW and Australian Federal Police had phone taps on Flower and some of his associates as well as other covert listening devices in place as their investigation reached around the world to the US Drug Enforcement Agency and into South Africa.

No-one knows exactly how long the leading racehorse owner got away with it but a Daily Telegraph investigation has uncovered there are police intelligence reports linking him to cocaine smuggling as early as 2005.

Snitzel with owner Flower before a Golden Slipper. Picture: James Croucher

He was said to be stoic when he was arrested at his Moorebank home at 5pm on May 22, 2019. Four months later, one of his many acolytes, property developer Matthew Doyle, 30, was arrested by the same strike force.

Strike Force Yahmara was made up of organised crime officers with NSW Police, the AFP and Australian Border Force.

The arrests of both men sent shockwaves through Sydney’s elite as they mixed with some of the city’s richest and most influential people.

Former private schoolboy and socialite Doyle, who gave Flower an entry into the eastern suburbs Bondi social set, was jailed last year for eight years with a non-parole period of five years after pleading guilty to supplying 50kg of cocaine worth $300 million in a police sting, even though the drugs had never existed.

Flower’s job as a baggage handler brought him into the circle of Sydney‘s Mr Big of cocaine dealing, Michael Hurley.

His exact links to Flower remain confidential with courts slapping non-publication orders on the facts.

For Flower, his teenage surfing connections brought him into contact with criminal elements of the infamous Bra Boys, some of whom were involved in the drug importation business. His job as a baggage handler brought him into the circle of Sydney’s Mr Big of cocaine dealing, Michael Hurley.

Hurley, who died in 2007 of cancer a month before facing court accused of heading what was then one of the country’s biggest cocaine rings, had been captured after going on the run in 2005 along with former footballer Les Mara days before a series of dawn raids snared the rest of their drug syndicate.

It was the first time baggage handlers had been exposed as a possible source of importing drugs.

The syndicate had been paying corrupt baggage handlers to make sure $39 million worth of cocaine got through from Argentina.

Flowers with wife Camilla at a Magic Millions Barrier trial draw.

Flower ploughed his money into real estate including the prestigious Platinum Park stables in the Hawkesbury.

It included former Bondi surfer Shane Hatfield, who is now serving 14 years after pleading guilty to heading the drug cartel.

The drugs had been carried off planes in marked briefcases by corrupt baggage handlers, paid off by Hurley and Mara. Mara was jailed for 20 years with 13 years non-parole.

Somehow Flower avoided the police net back in 2005.

PHOTOS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAMION FLOWER

“As a baggage handler himself he would have seen how to smuggle drugs. He also made connections he cultivated and kept for years to the point where he was running the show,‘’ a former NSW drug squad detective said.

“There was a lot of talk about him doing jobs for the Bra boys and it was passed on to senior police in 2009.”

But just like back in 2005, the golden boy Flower seemed to have everyone fooled into thinking his money came from being an established and successful racehorse trainer.

Winner … Snitzel went on to win over $1m in prize money.

Talk around the track about his seemingly endless cash supply was explained away as his luck with the horses multiplied. He had always been enthralled by the sport of kings since his dad followed the races.

His first horse Clangalang won the $1.9 million AJC Australian Derby in 2003. Flower sold his share in the stallion for $250,000, spending the money on a yearling called Snitzel, a colt from Redoute’s Choice.

Snitzel went on to win over $1 million in prize money and another $40 million from breeding fees, of which Flower claimed a 2.5 per cent share.

He ploughed his money into real estate with homes in Moorebank and the Gold Coast as well as the prestigious Platinum Park stables in the Hawkesbury with its 53 boxes, pool and treadmill.

He talked big about his property developments and the NSW Crime Commission was to seize assets worth around $19 million after he was charged.

He once spoke to Racing NSW about the near-fatal accident when he was 17 that ended his surfing career.

“I stepped out across the road and a guy came around a double-parked car and cleaned me up,” he said at the time.

‘A good friend of mine came in looking for me in the hospital. My face was grazed. He walked in and the nurse said ’2B’ but he walked back out and said ’I can’t find him’ before she said, ’no, that’s him’.

‘He said no, ’that can’t be him, he looks like a Snitzel’ and the nickname has stuck ever since.”

That was what he named the horse that everyone thought had made him his millions. The truth was hidden until now.