Chris Veljanovski fronts court over huge cash discovery in his house

A Taylors Hill family man in a senior logistics job hid nearly 560k in the kitchen and pantry cupboards of his Taylors Hill house following a major cocaine bust.

A Melbourne logistics manager arrested as part of $40m cocaine seizure admitted to concealing more than $550,000 cash in the kitchen and laundry of his house.

Chris Veljanovski, 44, of Taylors Hill, pleaded guilty in the County Court at Melbourne on October 13, 2023 to a charge of dealing in the proceeds of crime and appeared for a plea hearing on Monday.

He was one of five men the Australian Federal Police arrested as part of Operation Ironside after discovering the huge shipment was on its way to Melbourne from Hong Kong via Sydney in June 2021.

The syndicate, operating out of Hong Kong and Turkey, was using encrypted communications to organise the shipment via its Australian-based leader in Sydney.

Part of the importation of 160kg of cocaine into Melbourne, worth an estimated $40 million dollars.

Operation Ironside has ­resulted in charges for more than 200 organised crime figures after the AFP used technology that allowed it to see encrypted messages sent on the app ANOM in real time.

Acting on intelligence from the app and with help from Australian Border Force officers, AFP investigators moved quickly to seize the 160kg of cocaine, hidden inside a shipment of air filters that arrived in Melbourne on May 31.

Prosecutor Brett Stevens told the court on Monday that AFP investigators executed a warrant at Veljanovski’s Taylors Hill house on June 5, 2021 and seized $559,760 in Australian currency secreted on top of a cupboard in the kitchen pantry behind a false panel.

Money in $20, $50 and $100 notes was also recovered from inside a shoe box as well as from a cupboard in the laundry.

Australian Federal Police smashed an international organised crime syndicate after seizing $40m worth of cocaine in Melbourne.

Veljanovaski told investigators “Don’t know anything about it, I didn’t put the pantry up, I never built the house. I’d be interested in what’s in that”.

The prosecution said the amount was out of proportion to the income and expenses of Veljanovaski and his wife.

A forensic accountant concluded the cash seized was not derived from banks, sale of assets or declared income earned by the couple.

His lawyer David Cronin submitted that Veljanovaski was supporting his mother after the death of his father in 2015 and that he had worked hard in a logistics business where he was now in a role of responsibility.

A psychology report pointed to his mental health issues and that jail would be unpredictable and intimidating for him, Mr Cronin said.

He said a guilty plea demonstrated Veljanovaski’s genuine remorse, embarrassment, shame and regret for placing himself in this position.

Police found $559,760 Australian Dollars in various denominations hidden inside the kitchen and laundry of Veljanovaski’s Taylors Hill house.

Judge Anne Hassan said Veljanovaski’s motivation for the crime must have been to enrich himself and that she struggled to understand how a family man with a good job behaved in this manner.

Veljanovaski’s sentencing date is yet to be fixed.

Others arrested as part of Operation Ironside were Jaiden Russell, 26, of Taylors Hill, Youssef Alateyah, 28, of St Kilda, and Edward Cannobbio, 31, of Keilor East, and Edward Lee, 42.

Investigators believe Lee, a suspected crime boss from the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt, is the alleged ringleader of the syndicate.

Jaiden Russell, 26, of Taylors Hill, Youssef Alateyah, 28, of St Kilda, and Edward Cannobbio, 31, of Keilor East, have been charged with attempting to take possession of the ­cocaine to distribute.

Lee is up for a hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on June 5 while the others will appear for a committal on June 24.

Multiple police raids were carried out from June 4 to 6, 2021 in Taylors Hill, Keilor Park, Keilor East, Dandenong, Southbank, Point Cook and Laverton North.

The raids also unearthed an alleged cannabis grow house containing about 30 plants at a property in Melbourne’s northwest. During another search in Southbank, a money counting machine and imitation rifle were seized.

AFP detectives also raided a commercial property in Braybrook, seizing 30 containers of liquid containing what police believe to be a whopping 600 litres of pseudoephedrine – a chemical used to make methamphetamine.