Australian police launched a dozen raids in two states Tuesday night to help smash a global drugs cartel that has smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the country. The global drugs cartel also had used cans of tuna to smuggle cocaine.
Italian police revealed Australia had been a target market for the drug syndicate, run by Colombian drug lords, a Calabrian Mafia family and Spanish terrorists. They said Australian police had exposed the involvement of the Mafia.
In a document outlining Operation Decollo, the Italian carabinieri named a 48-year-old Australian-born man of Italian descent as the head of the Australian smuggling and drug distribution arm.
They said the operation began in August 2000 with the arrest in Adelaide of an Italian-born Australian resident over the importation of 317kg of cocaine. The drugs were allegedly shipped from Colombia to a South Australian company.
Italian authorities said the Australian Federal Police's discovery of cocaine inside 20cm tubes in hollowed-out blocks of marble had alerted them to Mafia involvement.
In 2001, another 300kg of cocaine was imported via a Sydney tile company through the Port of Melbourne.
In total, police in Australia, Italy, Spain and Germany seized more than 5.5 tons of cocaine with a street value of $462 million between August 2000 and October last year.
A map displayed at a press conference in Rome Tuesday evening showed drugs had been shipped from Colombia to southern Australia via China.
Smugglers hid 1.7 tons of cocaine in cans of tuna shipped from Ecuador to Spain, and 541kg in the bottom of plastic containers.
The international sting involved the AFP and agencies from Italy, Colombia, Venezuela, Spain, Holland, France, Germany and the US.
Terrorist groups, including the Basque ETA and Colombian paramalitary groups, were involved in the cartel.
AFP agents raided eight premises in Melbourne, four in Adelaide and one in Mildura, including a caryard Tuesday night.
An AFP spokeswoman said no one had been charged so far and declined to comment on the Australian companies and the two men named by Italian police. She said the drug syndicate had been targeting Australia as a market, and investigations were continuing.
Italy's chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Luigi Vigna, praised Australia's co-operation in the global drug bust, which has resulted in 110 arrests. But he warned that drug crops had become the easiest way for Colombian farmers to earn a living. “There is a need to find another system of agriculture to give these people a life of dignity,†he said.