Lucrative reason Australian drug dealers will keep taking the risk

Turning a $14,000 investment into $150,000 — this is why drug dealing will always be worth the risk to criminals in Australia.

Colossal profit margins above 1000 per cent were eyed by greedy Melbourne ice importers caught up in the global Ironside police operation.

Some of those entangled in the Australian Federal Police sting had negotiated to pay about $14,000 per kg for Mexican-manufactured methamphetamine to be smuggled through our ports.

This could then have been sold in Australia for wholesale prices as high as $150,000/kg.

The Australian domestic trade remains one of the world’s most lucrative, with an inexhaustible appetite for drugs driving high prices.

Mark Buddle. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

There are profits for other dealers once the ice is distributed in Australia, with the drug sold in ever-smaller lots until it reaches street level, where one-tenth of a gram costs $50.

Ironside has exposed major players in the drug scene after the secret AN0M app they were using to communicate was infiltrated by police.

The AN0M monitoring has proved a hammer blow for Australian-based and expat crime figures, including members of the Comanchero bikie gang.

Some of the biggest names in Australian organised crime are at the overseas end of obscene profit margins of the ice and cocaine trafficking trade.

Hasan Ayik, Mark Buddle and Angelo Pandeli, three Europe-based traffickers heavily linked with Australian bikie distribution networks are among those hit hard by Ironside.

Ayik and Buddle are believed to have gone underground as authorities turn up the heat after the evidence and intelligence bonanza yielded by the AN0M infiltration.

Senior police believe it could take years for those holdings to be fully analysed.