Businessmen who conspired to import 300kg of cocaine through Bamaga learn their fate

Two businessmen jailed for more than 20 years for conspiring to import 300kg of cocaine in jam jars through Bamaga have learnt their fate after a court has ruled on their appeal against conviction.

Two businessmen convicted over an “elaborate and sophisticated” plan to import 300kg of South American cocaine into Australia by shipping the drug in jam tins, then moving it from Papua New Guinea to Bamaga by boat, have lost a bid to overturn their convictions.

The international drug plot was pieced together by federal police, who were surveilling communication between three men suspected of planning the major importation for January 2018.

Jeffrey John Sagar, 68, and Paul Michael Smith, 63, were tried and convicted by a Supreme Court jury in late 2023 of a charge of conspiring to import a commercial quantity of cocaine and Papua New Guinea national Charles Wagambio was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years’ jail after pleading guilty to conspiring to import cocaine.

The court was told that, despite the extensive logistics planning, no physical drugs were ever located in Australia related to the plot.

A police photo alleged to be of Jeffrey Sagar meeting with co-accused Paul Michael Smith, 61, from Maroubra on May 9, 2018. Source: AFP Statement of Facts filed in the Supreme Court

Smith and Sagar lodged appeals against their convictions in the Queensland Court of Appeal, saying the jury’s verdict was unreasonable because they could not have found on the evidence that it was cocaine being discussed and imported and not, for example, gold or even heroin.

The Court of Appeal judgement said the prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence to make their case, largely from encrypted and coded messages.

The men variously referring to the products in their operations as goods, gold, solar panels, machinery, liquid, jam, tinned and fresh fruits and discussed concealing items.

“A significant amount of the evidence at the trial consisted of emails from Proton Mail accounts, SMS, WhatsApp messages and other information downloaded from mobile

phones, particularly of Mr Wagambio and Mr Smith ... recordings from telephone and listening device intercepts and video recordings and other surveillance evidence,” the Court of Appeal judgement said.

The judgement included samples of the messages viewed by the jury at trial like: “[g]oods are under the floor in container ... pure blocks my friend not in fruit tins” and “Bro I need to know the physical state of what I am moving. I was planning to move liquid and now you are telling me [it’s] in blocks”.

“Pure blocks my friend not in fruit tins” was one of the many messages shared between three men working on a plot to import 300kg of cocaine from South America to Australia, via boat between PNG and Bamaga.

Justice Susan Brown, in delivering the Court of Appeal decision, said the trial judge gave “specific directions” about circumstantial evidence and drawing inferences and had given a “detailed summary of rival contentions”.

She said evidence was presented to the jury about the subterfuge employed by the players and the lengths to which they had gone to make the operation look legitimate.

“The evidence revealed a sophisticated operation which expended significant planning, time and costs in order to bring in a product concealed amongst another product, namely jam.” Justice Brown wrote.

A Queensland Court of Appeal ruling has found that the jury in the case of Smith and Sagar could have readily reached the conclusion, on the evidence, that the coded messages were referring to cocaine.

“It was plain that the jury could readily have reached the conclusion that the jam was imported to disguise an illegal product which was concealed amongst the jam and that significant efforts had been undertaken to make the import of jam look to be a legitimate business transaction.

“The fact that the concealed product came from South America, and in particular Peru, from which it could be inferred it was being produced in Peru given the long period of time in the planning of the shipment and the fact that it was in a brick form which is the most commercially valuable form of cocaine, support the fact that the border-controlled drug was cocaine.”

The appeal was dismissed, with the decision agreed by all three judges of the Court of Appeal.

Originally published as Businessmen who conspired to import 300kg of cocaine through Bamaga learn their fate