PNG cocaine smuggler jailed in Aust

National

A Papua New Guinean who conspired to smuggle A$90 million (K211.4 million) of cocaine into Australia held a position for the traffickers as a logistics worker, a court has heard.
Charles Wagambio, 37, was part of a syndicate that planned to bring two shipments of about 600 kilograms of the drug from South America into Australia via PNG, the Brisbane Supreme Court has been told.
The conspiracy to ship the cocaine from Peru was busted by authorities without any drugs arriving in Australia.
Wagambio was part of one unsuccessful attempt to import 300 kilograms of cocaine concealed in pallets of jam in a sea-shipping container, Justice Soraya Ryan said on Monday.
Wagambio searched the container after it arrived in Port Moresby in January 2018 but found there was no cocaine concealed in it as he had expected.
They decided to import another container of cocaine.
However, the Peruvian police arrested the criminal syndicate, seizing more than one tonne of cocaine.
“Had the second attempted importation not been interrupted, a third was to follow,” the court was told.
The plan was to bring the drugs from PNG across the Torres Strait into far north Queensland using small boats.
Wagambio was a valuable part of the conspiracy from April 2016 until he voluntarily came to Australia, knowing he would be arrested, in June 2018.
“In so far as the syndicate was concerned, your occupation and your expertise were very valuable,” Justice Ryan told him during sentencing.
Wagambio was sentenced to 11 and a half years in jail after pleading guilty previously to conspiring to import cocaine. – AAP

One thought on “PNG cocaine smuggler jailed in Aust

  • Wagambio, Wagambio nogat head blo yu o…wants to become a millionaire over night and will now spend 4197 nights in jail dreaming of his not so lucky millions…hehehe

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