A cocaine-lined shipwreck and busting the lucrative drug route in the Pacific | 60 Minutes Australia

good evening and welcome to 60 Minutes first tonight inside the billion dollar cocaine war that stretches all the way from South America to Australia in the past three years our federal police have intercepted nearly two tons of cocaine on the lucrative Pacific route small Yachts are loaded up with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coke on the coast of Ecuador before making the long journey here the innocent looking yachties Breeze into our Eastern Waters mostly undetected before offloading their cargo to local drug dealers hiding Contraband below decks is a trick as old as smuggling itself but it's never been as audacious or as dangerous this is where the Journey Begins in the Myriad waterways of coastal Ecuador cocaine is loaded onto boats that will carry it to the markets of America Europe and increasingly Australia but for the crack police Commando units hunting down the Narco traffickers its Mission Impossible is it pure no matter how much of the stuff they capture it looks like it's very pure the flood of cocaine into Australia grows every year and the way it's getting here is ever more inventive here we had a yacht that was part of a Yacht Race these other participants had no idea that what they were racing with was a yacht that was full of cocaine all these boats begin their journey in South America it's more than 7 000 nautical miles of open Pacific Ocean on very small Yachts always with the threat of wild seas and Savage storms and as Andrew Colvin assistant commissioner of the Australian federal police warns there's always the threat of capture popular and and lucrative route for for organized crime to try and penetrate but as lucrative as it is it's also risky it's become a high-stakes contest between the world's most powerful crime syndicates most powerful law enforce enforced and caught in the middle Pacific island nations like Tonga now stopping off points on this long but highly profitable new trade route if it looks like paradise well for drug Runners trying to avoid cops and Customs and Border patrols it pretty much is except when it goes wrong as it did for the traffickers on this boat what happened on board is still a mystery what we do know is that this yacht set sail from Ecuador heading for Australia but somehow ended up here wrecked on this remote Reef hidden on board 120 million dollars worth of cocaine not so well hidden one rapidly decomposing body oh the corpse was this man Slovakian National Milan rinzak dead at least three weeks before he was found on board the wrecked yacht jury how he died still confounds authorities the autopsy has been done there's nothing in that that suggests Foul Play but you've got to understand the body had deteriorated considerably in the heat granto fee is tonga's perplexed police chief if it wasn't Foul Play How might have he died well it's as broad as your imagination really I guess I mean you've got the potential that uh I suppose if you're floating around in the Pacific and you're a bit bored and you like a bit of cocaine and you've got 200 kgs of the stuff maybe you sample a product we don't know so yeah that's a mystery adding to the Intrigue there were two men aboard the yacht when it left Ecuador where is that missing man I'm not being evasive you I suppose I simply don't know he's somewhere between Ecuador and Thomas this was the giraffe just a few months before it set sail plush 13 meter yacht was bought in Panama by an unknown buyer who handed over ninety thousand dollars in cash the U.S drug enforcement agency started tracking it from Ecuador but lost it somewhere in the vast Pacific Kurt Coulson is a fishing guide in Tonga who knows these Waters well definitely not surprised that it ended up on this Reef here if nobody was driving it I fish out here a lot myself and that's how uh my son and I saw it and we actually found that it was this boat full of drugs so drug boat with a dead body on it yeah kind of creepy after the alarm was raised police found 204 kilograms of cocaine neatly sealed in one kilogram blocks inside hidden compartments most boats do have cavities like this inside of them it definitely makes it easy on somebody trying to hide something is a poor country and an easy target for the billion dollar drug cartels looking for a base in the Pacific don't talk to me later but even Toms were shocked when the speaker of the parliament Lord Tui Le kepa was arrested on charges of conspiring with a Colombian drug cartel to import hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Australia Lord Tui lekepa a member of the Tongan royal family vouched for Colombian drug boss obil Gomez to obtain a visitor's visa for Tonga despite never having met him do you know the Colombian drug lord Gomez can you talk to my lawyer please when police raided Lord tuilakepa's house they found a stash of guns and ammunition do you feel that Tonga is being targeted by these drug cartels a drug dealers think but they they make their business choices obviously like anyone else is their business Choice made easier if you have members of parliament who are happy to be involved in the drug trade as one of yours has been accused of doing yeah that well I imagine that doesn't help I mean the drug conspiracy charges against Lord tuila Kappa have now been withdrawn on the grounds of lack of evidence [Music] excuse me look to the keeper when we approached him at his home this not so chivalrous nobleman bolted and left his daughter to do the talking I'd like to speak to you is it your father yeah do you guys want to wait outside then brought in some local muscle he's not sleeping I just saw him drive in finally called the police we just want to talk to him about cocaine what's fueling this headlong Dash into Australia by the drug cartels is demand a seemingly insatiable market for the white powder the car tells the targeting Australia because of the profit the importers are getting something in the order of 200 to 250 000 a kilo here in America you might get twenty five thirty thousand dollars a kilo 10 times 10 times greater former New South Wales assistant Police Commissioner Clive small has watched the infatuation with cocaine spread from the stock broker circuit and party scene to the working class and the outer suburbs [Music] it is the ultimate aspirational drug isn't it I mean you haven't made it unless you're snorting cocaine I think that's probably the attraction I don't think cocaine still has the has the stigma that some of the other drugs have and there's always an abundance of it the times in just three years the number of Australians using cocaine jumped by more than one hundred thousand people to nearly four hundred thousand if you know where to look it's everywhere even though the police make a big show of the drugs they've seized the Raj Maud in Vanuatu on its way to Australia with 750 kilograms of cocaine on board estimated street value 350 million dollars the Friday Freedom docked in Bundaberg 300 kilograms value 78 million the Mayhem of Eden allegedly collected its cargo from another yacht 800 kilometers off the Queensland Coast seized half a ton of cocaine worth 160 million dollars all caught by the Australian federal police a hall assistant commissioner Andrew Colvin is proud of what percentage do you think you're getting I don't know and I wouldn't want to speculate does it worry you that you don't know uh what would worry me is if we weren't seizing and I wasn't confident that we weren't that we were dismantling syndicate but we're not at a stage yet where the South American Cocaine Cowboys are saying well Australia is way too hard we're going somewhere else I don't think the South American Cocaine Cowboys are saying that about any country in the world the the profits are too great so is the AFP making any dent in this at all it might appear as though we're seizing a lot of the drugs but if you're impacting on the market what you'd be seeing if you were being successful is a periods of short supply of increasing prices I don't think we've seen a shortage in cocaine for an awful long time coming up on land is that pure it looks like it's very pure at Sea they're prepared to sacrifice lives people will sail that submarine and in the air fighting back in South America's billion-dollar drug war we're on the hunt for drug Runners here in South America where there's no shortage of cocaine and certainly no shortage of ships ready to take it out how many shipments do you think get through that you don't know about well in each country 20 or 30 percent of cocaine is intercepted but a lot more does get through General one Carlos Barragan the police chief in charge of counter-narcotics in Ecuador says the gerev the drug yacht stranded in Tonga was monitored from the moment it arrived here there was a meticulous inspection of both the boat internally and also its papers and nothing suspicious including drugs was found as a result of that we had to let it leave the pool and why did the yacht come under suspicion people on board never came out they didn't act like tourists so you were watching them closely to know that Facebook it's a small country [Music] Marina empty but police suspect it was here just offshore that she was loaded up with her illegal cargo more than 200 kilograms of cocaine before setting sail for Australia kill Ecuador is now the launching point for more and more boats because of its perfect positioning for the drug cartels Ecuador has the waterways and its nearest neighbors Peru and Colombia are by far the biggest producers of cocaine in the world some of the drugs head north to Mexico for the American market and for that Journey the cartels now build their own submarines capable of staying underwater for days at a time thank you this one designed for a two-man crew was captured just a few months ago tiny I don't know how they'd do this for five minutes let alone ten days it's meant to obtain them to get to Mexico it's not a one-off in recent years authorities have captured or sunk dozens of these death traps they're prepared to sacrifice lives people who for a handful of dollars will sail that submarine which as you saw it's basically a cage ready for people to die in [Applause] [Music] this war raging across South America here for example a police helicopter Fires at drug traffickers on a main street in Rio [Music] and here the traffickers shoot back with deadly Precision killing all the police aboard [Music] so it's not surprising that this crack unit of anti-narcotics police in Ecuador treat every Mission as if it could be their last we're on patrol today looking for smaller local boats like fishing vessels and barges which these police suspect might be carrying the cocaine out to bigger ships further out to sea like motorboats and Yachts what they consider the motherships and those motherships then can go anywhere in the world Europe America even Australia and when the patrol spots are suspicious looking vessel they don't muck around every member of the crew is searched for drugs and weapons if the boat is carrying cocaine this could quickly turn into a gunfight suspect vessels [Music] foreign the reward seizures like this nearly 400 kilograms of cocaine each package neatly imprinted with the Insignia of the cartel see and the tea each one of these blocks is worth a quarter of a million dollars by the time it hits the streets in Australia and unbelievably this is just the weekly haul of the small fraction of cocaine captured it must feel never ending for you absolutely every Thursday we we do these Burns and it just and it just feels like there are still doors that we need to be closing to stop the flow of drugs these drugs go up in smoke but the cop in charge fears the traffickers will keep winning if he doesn't get more cooperation from western police forces and he points directly at the Australian federal police how good is your relationship with the Australian police authorities when it comes to stopping this trade I've been in charge of Ecuador's fight against drugs for two years now and I've never heard of any exchange of information with the Australians ah for now the drug ran across the Pacific remains wide open [Music] as for the missing crew member from the jury well we'll let you know if he surfaces but don't hold your breath hello I'm Tom Steinfeld thank you for watching it's 60 Minutes Australia subscribe to our Channel now for brand new stories and exclusive Clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes which are on 9now.com and the nine Now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

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Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Tom Steinfort, 60Mins, Amelia Adams, news, world news, news australia, investigative journalism, 60 minutes australia youtube, 60 minutes youtube, 60 minutes episodes, 60 minutes australia episodes, 60 minutes australia, 60 minutes, cocaine, drugs, narcotics, smugglers, smuggling, drug mule, drug smuggling, australia drug problem, illicit drugs, tonga shipwreck, drug yachts, colombia, ecuador, tonga, australia, afp

Id: lgL5pHILyO4

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023