 Vanuatu News Online
By Hedley Thomas - The Weekend Australian
Sunday, 22 April 2007
A secret Australian Federal Police intelligence dossier that names a dozen suspects being covertly investigated for alleged ties to an international drug-smuggling ring has been disclosed in an embarrassing security lapse.
The dossier, portions of which were obtained yesterday by The Weekend Australian, suggests that Australians, Americans, Swiss citizens, New Zealanders and Vanuatu locals - working variously in hospitality, accountancy and mining - are linked in a major racket to produce and distribute large quantities of amphetamines and cocaine.
Sources in Port Vila insisted yesterday that a copy of the dossier had been hand-delivered by an AFP employee to the lawyer of one of the suspects. The AFP, which has a contingent of officers based in Port Vila, admitted the inadvertent disclosure yesterday but emphatically denied the AFP was responsible for the bungle.
A spokesman said the dossier was mistakenly released by the Vanuatu police force.
The dossier describes an alleged Sydney-based narcotic figure and associate, "alleged to be involved in the importation of cocaine into Sydney and laundering of money believed to be the proceeds of drug importation".
For legal reasons The Weekend Australian cannot identify most of those who are named in the dossier. It describes one of the suspects as being the nephew of a man "well known by the AFP for drug importation", having been arrested "for his principal involvement in the importation and distribution of cocaine in Sydney".
The dossier describes the activities of related Swiss-based companies, and reveals covert monitoring of suspect fund transfers to a pharmaceutical company in China. It also recommends surveillance of a mining area in Vanuatu "as it relates to suspected storage/transhipment point for illicit activities".
The bungle in the Vanuatu capital resulted in the 18-page dossier, stamped "Highly Protected", going on to the court file in a prosecution case against three Australians accused of smuggling conman Peter Foster from Fiji, sources revealed.
The discovery of the dossier on the Vanuatu Supreme Court file alarmed top AFP officers, who feared its release could destroy the undercover operation. Officers based in Vanuatu have unsuccessfully tried to retrieve the dossier, which includes photos and computer records,
from the Supreme Court before it could be read or copied to the suspects. Sources said they went to enormous lengths to get it back.
When those efforts failed, Australian government lawyers applied to the Vanuatu Supreme Court to order the destruction of the dossier. The legal application also failed and copies of the dossier have now been read by every suspect named, resulting in red faces in the AFP and the collapse of its operation.
One of the suspects named in the dossier, struck-off former Sydney solicitor Andrew Tatar, made multiple copies that have been emailed, faxed and handed to all the AFP targets and suspects.
"I said to everyone, 'You've been named in this document, here is a copy if you want to take any legal action against the AFP'," Mr Tatar, who denies any connection to drug trafficking, said from Port Vila yesterday. "It has been quite widely distributed.
"One guy accused of setting up an amphetamines laboratory is outraged. He owns a resort.
"They have cobbled this document together to try to justify to the Vanuatu authorities that we are bad people."
The Vanuatu Supreme Court told The Weekend Australian yesterday that "the AFP Intelligence Advisory Report has (since) been removed from the court file and returned to the Public Prosecutor".
Several of those named in the dossier are furious at the damning contents, describing the intelligence as highly flawed and extremely defamatory.
However, an AFP spokesman said late yesterday: "The release does not compromise any trans-national crime investigations being undertaken by the AFP. The report had a caveat clearly stating that it contained untested |
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1804-1881)
Jacinta Moli from Central Malaita representing Solomon Islands in Powerlifting during the Commonwealth Games
