Alleged drug trafficker Kim Andrew White’s bail denied over prison phone call

An alleged Sunshine Coast drug trafficker has been denied bail after he was allegedly captured in recorded prison phone calls threatening violence in response to an attack on his son, a court has heard.

Sunshine Coast man Kim Andrew White was charged with serious drug offences in May. Picture: Facebook

An alleged Sunshine Coast drug trafficker has been denied bail after recorded prison phone calls allegedly captured Kim Andrew White threatening violence in response to his son being attacked, a court has heard.

Supreme Court Justice Soraya Ryan at times seemed aghast at the contents of the Arunta Prisoner Telephone System calls but accepted none of the alleged threats made by White Snr had been acted upon.

“It is an attitude to violence … that is cavalier, it is normalised. There’s no ‘mate how you feel’ it’s ‘mate let me tell you what we’re going to do in retaliation’,” Justice Ryan said of one of the prison phone calls.

Meridan Plains man Kim Andrew White, 48, was charged in May with 12 offences including three counts of possessing dangerous drugs, two of trafficking in dangerous drugs and one count each of receiving or possessing property obtained from trafficking or supplying and unlawful possession of weapons

At the same time his son Marshall Andrew White, 20, was charged with 14 offences including four counts of possessing dangerous drugs, two of trafficking dangerous drugs and receiving or possessing property obtained from trafficking or supplying, and one count each of possessing anything used in the commission of crime and unlawful possession of weapons.

Marshall Andrew White. Picture: Instagram

Crown prosecutor Caleb Theunissen opposed bail but conceded the delay in providing the brief of evidence amounted to a material change in circumstances – a legal hurdle White Snr had to satisfy after he was refused bail by Justice Michael Copley in June.

Mr Theunissen alleged the prison phone calls were related to White Snr and his son’s trafficking charges.

”It’s not that his son got into a punch up at the pub … it’s related to their criminal enterprise,” he claimed.

“(White Snr) states names. He states going to get revenge. He talks about someone who he links to a raid that happened on his house.

“He explicitly makes threats that when he gets out … he’s going to inflict this violence.”

The alleged threats also related to people the crown claims owed drug debts.

Barrister Andrew O’Brien, instructed by Jones & Associates, said the prison phone calls were just “bravado”

“This isn’t a case, either in the brief or as a matter of allegation, that the applicant is a man who has in fact resorted to the violence,” he said.

“It’s not even an allegation that he was somehow some brute enforcer going around threatening to bash people.

“There’s no history of him acting in the way in which he speaks.”

Mr O’Brien said the phone calls were seven months old and his client had improved his attitude and completed a drug rehab course in custody.

He proposed White Snr be granted bail under strict conditions including a $100,000 surety to be put up by his mother

But Justice Ryan found the prison phone calls in her view provided “accurate and reliable evidence of the applicant’s attitude to his offending and to criminal conduct more generally”.

“It reveals an understanding of the nature of the evidence against him and contains threats to persons who have provided material used in evidence against the syndicate,” she said.

“It would be extremely naive of me to dismiss them as nothing more than hyperbole or bravado.

“His son has been confronted more than once by more than one individual, including on one occasion, one of them has a gun. He has been injured in what reads like to me, a reasonably serious way.

“And there is no shock, there is no surprise, there is nothing but a response (by White Snr) in terms of retaliation to learning of that”.

Bail was refused.

White Jnr was granted bail last year.

Originally published as Alleged drug trafficker Kim Andrew White’s bail denied over prison phone call