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Police found 2.7 metric tonnes of cocaine on a property on the outskirts of Sydney in Australia’s largest ever seizure of the drug, officials said on Monday.
The drug was found on 19 June in plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semi-rural property in the suburb of Londonderry on in western Sydney, the Queensland Joint Organised 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 816 million Australian dollars (€499 million).
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 metric tonnes seized in 2024 from a fishing boat near K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, off the coast of Queensland state.
Police said the cocaine found in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state and Australia’s most populous city, landed by boat at Midge Point in the sparsely-populated Queensland tropics.
Police added that a Sydney organised crime group transported the drug by road to the city, a distance of 1,800 kilometres.
Officials noted that they suspect the shipment was landed from the same mother ship as 178 kilograms of cocaine previously seized in Queensland.
Six people have been charged over that seizure and a further 142 kilograms of methamphetamine, another class A narcotic, that was also found in the investigation.
They 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 organised crime. The Solomons are 2,000 kilometres northeast of Queensland.
Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay said organised crime groups were increasingly targeting Queensland’s 13,000 kilometre coastline to smuggle narcotics at alarming quantities into the country.
Australians pay some of the world’s highest prices for cocaine and other drugs, which makes the country one of the most lucrative market for drug traffickers.
Additional sources • AP