Supreme Court denies appeal for drug dealer Dragan ‘Machine Gun Charlie’ Arnautovic
A drug dealer and former boxing champion known as ‘Machine Gun Charlie’, jailed last year following an undercover cop sting in Laverton, has been dealt another blow by the courts.
Wyndham Leader
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Former boxing champion Dragan ‘Machine Gun Charlie’ Arnautovic has been dealt another blow after his bid to appeal against his latest drug trafficking sentence was struck out.
Arnautovic, 56, was arrested in the Corio Bay Motel car park in December 2016, following a three-month police investigation which included undercover officers posing as buyers in three covert operations in Laverton and Williamstown.
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More than $373,000 of heroin and methylamphetamine was later found during a search of Arnautovic’s home in Melton West — including under the hood of his car — and in a locked box under his mother’s St Albans house.
He was found guilty of the commercial supply of heroin and trafficking of methylamphetamine in May 2018 and was sentenced to a minimum of eight years in prison.
Arnautovic has a history of dealing heroin, with charges dating to the 1980s, and has spent more than 24 of the past 29 years behind bars.
Croatian-born Arnautovic sought leave to appeal his latest jail stint, arguing his sentence on two of the drugs charges was “not a just an appropriate measure of the total criminality involved”.
He claimed he should not have received separate charges for trafficking heroin and methylamphetamine as they were stored together under his mother’s house.
But justices Emilios Kyrou and Lesely Taylor of the Court of Appeal quashed his bid for earlier release.
“We reject the applicant’s submission that the fact that the methylamphetamine was stored in the same location as the heroin diminishes the seriousness of the offending,” the court ruled.
“The two offences involved different drugs with their own distinct characteristics, quantity and value (and) they would have caused their own separate harm to those who would have used them.”
Arnautovic will not be eligible for parole until June 2026 after his leave to appeal was refused.
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