Drug smugglers with triad links get 20 years

Australian authorities have busted a syndicate seeking to import a record amount of drugs which can be used to manufacture crystal meth.

Authorities seized the drug precursor ephedrine that landed in the Port of Melbourne in January 2019.

Two drug smugglers with ties to Chinese organised crime have each been slapped with nearly 20 years’ jail time after they were found guilty of importing the largest seizure of a drug precursor into Victoria.

Kwun Chen was given a sentence of 17 years and six months and Rick Chan was served with 18 years after they imported 1052.7kg of ephedrine into Melbourne.

That amount of precursor could have been synthesised into 1183kg of crystal meth, and a statement from the Australian Federal Police said the illicit drugs would have had a street value of $691.5m.

County Court judge Michael McInerney commended authorities who busted the syndicate, which expected to make “huge profits” off the drugs.

“The community can be thankful that because of such police diligence, this very serious crime was detected,” he said on Monday.

Two legitimate tile importation businesses were set up in 2018 and established as a front under which the illegal cargo could be imported.

Four “dummy” runs were carried out between December 2018 and January 2019 when nine ­shipping containers arrived in Melbourne containing tile glue.  A consignment containing the ephedrine was shipped from Guangzhou, China, and arrived in Melbourne on February 16, 2019.

Authorities seized ephedrine after it was intercepted, replaced it with another substance and kept it under surveillance. Investigators tracked the import to a suburban home in Box Hill North, about 20km east of the city.

At trial it was argued that Chen and Chan were members of a syndicate that included Chen’s older brother Hong and his partner, Shumin Zeng.

Both Chinese nationals “avoided arrest by leaving Aus­tralia in February 2019”.

Zeng’s twin 29-year-old sons, Junlong Shen and Junju Shen, were sentenced to pre-sentence detention of 562 days each for transporting the ephedrine to the home in Box Hill where they lived.

Australian Border Force superintendent maritime operations Dan Peters said the crime group was dismantled as a ­result of combined AFP and ABF efforts.

“Our officers are constantly alert to attempts to conceal illicit substances, no matter how creative criminal syndicates are in trying to hide them,” he said.

“Officers using X-ray technology detected anomalies inside plastic tubs labelled ceramic tiles.”