Qantas baggage handlers have been charged with smuggling 100 kilograms of cocaine. Source: ANU
Two Qantas baggage handlers in Sydney Airport have been charged with cocaine smuggling on Saturday.
Darren Bragg and Michael McPherson, along with three other men, were arrested for their part in the alleged importation of around 100 kilograms of cocaine, which was stored in a plane’s cargo bay.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) allege that Bragg, 61, and McPherson, 55, used their position as baggage handlers to help smuggle five large bags of cocaine that arrived from South Africa on Saturday.
The AFP alleged that the two men then put the bags in a car, the driver of which was working for accused ‘facilitator’ Ahmed Haoucher, who ‘organised figures overseas to source cocaine.’
The four men, along with a fifth from Hillsdale in Sydney’s east, were charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug.
The baggage handlers had their homes searched, where the AFP seized small amounts of drugs as well as phones.
The AFP said that organised crime groups have been recruiting people working in airport baggage handling to import drugs internationally.
The AFP said the group had been the subject of a year long investigation, beginning with ‘suspicious activity’ being noticed by an aviation partner in the cargo area of a passenger plane in Johannesburg.
The AFP said investigations into the South African end of the operations are ongoing.
The five men charged appeared in Parramatta Court on Sunday and were remanded in custody to reappear in November.
