AP, MELBOURNE
Australian police found 2.7 tonnes of cocaine on a property on Sydney’s outskirts in Australia’s largest-ever seizure of the drug, officials said yesterday. The drug was found on Friday in plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semirural property in the suburb of Londonderry on Sydney’s western edge, the Queensland Joint Organized Crime Taskforce said in a statement. The containers had false floors that provided access to the cocaine, which police estimate had a street value of A$816 million (US$570.8 million).
Seized cocaine is pictured in Sydney in an undated photo released by the Australian Federal Police.
Two Sydney residents, men aged 21 and 25, were arrested at the property and charged with possessing a commercial quantity of an illicit drug. They face potential sentences of life in prison.
Australia’s previous record cocaine haul was 2.34 tonnes seized in 2024 from a fishing boat near K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, off the Queensland state. Police said the cocaine found in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and Australia’s most populous city, landed by boat at Midge Point in the sparsely populated Queensland tropics. A Sydney organized crime group transported the drug by road to the city, a distance of 1,800km, police said. Police added that they suspect the shipment was landed from the same mother ship as 178kg of cocaine previously seized in Queensland. Six people have been charged over that cocaine and 142kg of methamphetamine that was also found in the investigation. Australian police suspect the mother ship to be MV Wealth, a Belize-flagged cargo ship that has been seized by authorities in Solomon Islands on suspicion of involvement in transitional organized crime. The Solomons are 2,000km northeast of Queensland. Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay said organized crime groups were increasingly targeting Queensland’s 13,000km coastline to smuggle drugs. Australians pay some of the world’s highest prices for cocaine, which makes Australia a lucrative market for drug traffickers.
