Pubdate: Sun, 16 Apr 2000
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 David Syme & Co Ltd
Contact:  250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Author: Brendan Nicholson

DRUG WAR: THE ENEMY JUST GETS SMARTER

International criminal gangs are mounting counter-intelligence operations 
against police as their attempts to smuggle massive drug shipments into 
Australia become increasingly sophisticated.

Drug entrepreneurs have responded to increased Australian police activity 
by using their vast wealth to buy equipment to encode their telephone 
conversations, to keep police stations under surveillance when shipments 
are due, and to study police techniques so that they can change their own 
tactics.

A source who declined to be identified told The Sunday Age that former 
law-enforcement specialists were also being employed by legal teams 
defending gang members charged with drug offences.

"They can analyse briefs of evidence to determine how plans came unstuck 
and how the players were caught, the tactics used to catch them," the 
officer said.

That told the defence team how the investigation was carried out, through 
undercover agents, informers, electronic surveillance or overseas intelligence.

"But it also goes back to the entrepreneur as in-service training so they 
don't do it that way again. Basically they are providing intelligence 
assessments to the crooks."

That made it difficult for police to stay ahead, and could also endanger 
informants.

"We think we're getting the jump by way of a new bit of technology or this 
new bit of legislation, but they're always ahead," the source said.

The source said counter-intelligence had become a huge industry in the 
criminal world.

"It employs great legal skills. Around the world former police and 
intelligence officers have the capacity to defeat your electronics - 
listening devices, phone taps and tracking systems and everything else we use."

Criminal gangs could, with relative ease, obtain the sort of equipment 
police were using to monitor their activities. "We first saw that happening 
in America and now we're seeing it here."

Gangs were were using encryption devices to prevent police listening to 
their plans on intercepted phone calls: "You can buy the capacity to 
scramble phone calls over the counter," the source said.

The international drug trade had become far more sophisticated as the 
hierarchal structures that controlled production and distribution in the 
past had given way to operations that were more fluid and entrepreneurial.

Suppliers were trying to outdo each other and were offering packaged deals.

"We are now finding there arepoly-drug syndicates operating like a 
supermarket - `what do you want? Look at the range we have here'."

Gangs operating out of Asia and Europe are also using contacts in Australia 
to gather detailed information about police operations through press 
conferences and drug-squad interviews.

Federal agent Mick Keelty, the officer responsible for Australian Federal 
Police international anti-drug operations, said telephone intercepts caught 
syndicate organisers in Europe and Asia asking for information after major 
drug busts.

"When we have seizures here the organisers overseas are demanding to find 
out what our methodologies are. They get on the phone and have material 
faxed over to them.

"We're monitoring them calling for the press releases and wanting details 
of how we did it. Anything we say in the press. That is why we are very 
keen not to disclose methodology, because as quick as we do they alter 
their methods of importation.

"It's counter-intelligence."

Mr Keelty said he was not surprised the drugs gangs were becoming more 
sophisticated. "They are in a multi-million-dollar business, so why 
wouldn't they be?"

The syndicates were operating like any other business and the amounts at 
stake were huge.

The extent to which the drug gangs had harnessed the benefits of 
globalisation and the intricacy of the high-tech police work needed to 
combat them were illustrated dramatically in an operation that saw nearly 
$7million in cash confiscated from a syndicate operating between Australia 
and the Netherlands.

Australian officers had the syndicate under investigation for more than two 
years when they intercepted a telephone call revealing that a significant 
amount of money was to be hidden aboard a Panama-registered ship, the 
Neptune Wind, that was about to sail from Yamba in northern NSW for the 
Philippines.

"We heard them talking about it being secreted in packs of meat," Mr Keelty 
said.

That piece of the intelligence jigsaw fitted snugly with a surveillance 
report that syndicate members had visited an abattoir.

"We decided it was time to take them out." One team descended on the ship. 
"We went into the fridge, unpacked the meat and found $5.1million in cash."

The money came in every denomination. It was tightly compressed and vacuum 
sealed, but still filled a packing case.

"We didn't know how much we had. Most people have no notion what $5million 
cash looks like."

The officers took their haul to the Reserve Bank, but the tightly packed 
money would not go through the counting machine and it took three days to 
count it by hand.

Another team searched the Bunyip Inn, a hotel the syndicate was running on 
the NSW South Coast. They demolished a wall and found more than $900,000 in 
Australian cash. No drugs were found, but the operation had uncovered 
enough evidence for the police to prove that the cash was going to be used 
to purchase the next consignment the syndicate brought in.

"We hit them with a conspiracy charge," Mr Keelty said.

The syndicate had been working throughout Asia and Europe and extensively 
across Australia and was run by 67-year-old Lawrence "Joe" McLean, one of 
Australia's most successful criminals.

Long suspected of being heavily involved in the drug scene, McLean had 
avoided serious trouble with the law for nearly 30 years and was widely 
considered untouchable.

Looking like any harmless old pensioner, he'd wander around Australia using 
concession tickets to travel by bus. But in his bumbag he'd have $100,000.

When a big drug shipment was coming in, his syndicate would keep police 
stations under surveillance to find out whether the police were on to them.

Those responsible for "laundering" the money planned to bank it and have it 
transferred electronically to the suppliers in Europe as American dollars. 
The bank would then send the cash back to Australia.

McLean was convicted of conspiracy to import tonnes of cannabis resin and 
jailed for 16 years.

The Bunyip Inn was confiscated as part of the proceeds of crime and 
auctioned recently for $960,000, which goes into government consolidated 
revenue.
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