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Bad hair day — Australian airline worker arrested for drugs concealed in shampoo on flight from SA

Bad hair day — Australian airline worker arrested for drugs concealed in shampoo on flight from SA
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
12 Dec 2024
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An airline worker in Australia has been arrested after a flight from South Africa when cops found drugs concealed in shampoo. This comes about a year after cocaine worth R500-million was flown between the countries – and as drugs are being intercepted at Gauteng’s main airport.

Airport traffic and congestion increases internationally over the holiday period. So too does the potential for drugs being trafficked via planes.

In South Africa over the past few months there has been an increase in arrests of suspected couriers or “mules” arriving in the country with cocaine concealed in or on their bodies.

Now an arrest in Australia, which links to South Africa, points to the other ways drugs are being moved between countries.

Read more: South Africa’s lucrative drugs highway to the land Down Under

Australia has deep drug trafficking connections with South Africa, about which Daily Maverick has reported extensively.

It is clear that organised crime groups there are linked to local ones.

Trafficking between the countries persists.

‘Coma in a bottle’


The Australian Federal Police this week announced that officers had arrested an airline employee for allegedly importing 4.1 litres of gamma butyrolactone (GBL) there.

Australian police have described GBL as “an illicit substance commonly known as liquid ecstasy or ‘coma in a bottle’”. A few millilitres of it can result in loss of consciousness and memory problems.

In the arrest linked to this country, Australia’s federal police said: “The man, 29, of [the Sydney suburb] Newtown, was performing work duties on board an international flight when he arrived at Sydney Airport on Saturday, 7 December 2024, from South Africa.”

Read more: Australian cocaine trafficking-accused ‘De Niro’ with SA links has brotherly ties to R12bn global crime web

Australian Border Force officers searched his baggage and “located three shampoo bottles and a water bottle in a clip seal bag, wrapped in items of clothing”, the federal police said.

“Initial testing of the liquid contents allegedly returned a positive reading for GBL.”

‘Abused his position’


Police officers seized the bottles and arrested the man who was charged with “importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug”.

He appeared in a court in Australia and is expected back in the dock in February 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaGf-UkLo_k

The suspect is being kept in custody.

In reaction to his arrest, Australian Federal Police detective, Acting Superintendent Dom Stephenson, said: “[We are] committed and focused on identifying and disrupting those who attempt to import harmful illicit substances into our country.

“We will allege the man charged abused his trusted position as an airline employee and sought to use that access to smuggle a commercial quantity of drugs into Australia.”

It is not the first time drugs have been smuggled from South Africa to Australia on a plane.

Cocaine planes


In October 2023, five suspects were arrested in Australia after cocaine worth R500-million was flown there from South Africa. They were taken into custody after a yearlong project codenamed Operation Lucian.

Read more: Five suspected traffickers arrested at OR Tambo airport in sting after R500m cocaine flown from SA to Australia

That project had been launched in October 2022 “following a report from an airline of suspicious activity that occurred near the cargo area of a Sydney-bound flight in Johannesburg”.

The month after the five arrests in Australia, in November 2023, five suspects were arrested at OR Tambo International Airport in connection with the cocaine that had landed in Australia.

There have been other cases of drug smuggling on planes between South Africa and Australia.

Baggage handlers


In this journalist’s book, Clash of the Cartels: Unmasking the global drug kingpins stalking South Africa, a chapter focuses on such trafficking.

In 2019, Damion Flower and John Mafiti, who more than two decades ago worked as baggage handlers for Qantas airline at Sydney International Airport, were arrested for effectively getting cocaine into Australia on planes from South Africa.

Read more: Clash of the Cartels – revealing the global organised crime networks that exist right under your nose

Clash of the Cartels reads: “Flower left his job as a baggage handler in 2004, but seemed to stay in touch with Mafiti. 

“This all happened at roughly the same time a syndicate was planning to use airline baggage handlers to get cocaine into Australia. 

“That year, 2004, the syndicate allegedly smuggled 10 kilograms into the country from South America. 

“Members of this criminal organisation included a rugby player, Les Mara (who later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import a drug), and a man viewed as Australia’s cocaine importing king, Michael Hurley (who died in 2007 before he could go on trial).”

In the Flower and Mafiti case, both were eventually sentenced to time in jail. In May this year their sentences were reduced on appeal.

Drug mules


Meanwhile, drug smuggling via OR Tambo International Airport appears to have increased recently – or police action in this regard has.

Read more: Brazil’s drug mule boom hits SA — multiple arrests and cocaine worth millions seized

Daily Maverick on Wednesday reported that over roughly four months there had been at least 11 arrests, with ties to São Paulo in Brazil, at the airport.

Those arrested were suspected drug couriers, or mules, who had allegedly tried to smuggle cocaine in or on their bodies into this country.

Read more: ‘Drug kingpins don’t care if you’re caught’, warns mom of Gauteng ‘mule’ detained in Mauritius

But some sources with ties to policing have questioned whether those arrested at OR Tambo are actually “decoy mules” – individuals carrying smaller parcels of drugs who are set up to be arrested.

Syndicate members intentionally tip off police about those mules to distract officers from larger drug consignments brought into the country at the same time. DM

Caryn Dolley’s explosive new book, Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage, is now available in bookstores and at the Daily Maverick Shop.

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