Australia’s Border Force fighting drug cartels under the sea | 60 Minutes Australia

Subscribe here: http://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J Full Episodes: https://9now.app.link/uNP4qBkmN6 | Cops vs Cartels

More than a million Australians use cocaine every year. The white powder costs more than gold, but it’s a price that consumers are happy to pay. Happier still are the bosses of the international drug cartels who are reaping enormous riches, despite state and federal law enforcement agencies doing all they can to stop cocaine getting into the country.

How the officers go about their work is mostly done in secret. But not always. On 60 MINUTES, Sarah Abo goes inside the Australian Border Force battle to outwit the criminals responsible for smuggling massive amounts of illegal narcotics.

WATCH more of 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.60minutes.com.au
LIKE 60 Minutes Australia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/60Minutes9
FOLLOW 60 Minutes Australia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/60Mins
FOLLOW 60 Minutes Australia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60minutes9

For over forty years, 60 Minutes have been telling Australians the world’s greatest stories. Tales that changed history, our nation and our lives. Reporters Liz Hayes, Tom Steinfort, Tara Brown, Nick McKenzie and Amelia Adams look past the headlines because there is always a bigger picture. Sundays are for 60 Minutes.

#60MinutesAustralia

More than a million Australians use cocaine every year the white powder costs more than gold but it’s a price consumers here are happy to pay happier still are the bosses of the drug cartels who are reaping enormous profits their riches are growing despite state and federal law enforcement agencies doing

All they can to stop the drugs getting into the country how the officers go about their work is mostly done in secret but not always tonight we’re taking you inside their battle to out with the criminals responsible for smuggling massive amounts of illegal Narcotics Sydney’s bustling Port botney is one of the largest container facilities in the country ships stream in and out of here 24 hours a day today there’s a VIP on the water the commissioner of a Australian Border force in recent times we’ve had hundreds of kilos of Narcotics found Michael

Out’s come here on a mission to send a message to his greatest enemies the bosses of the drug cartels so commissioner we’re looking at a pretty big [ __ ] with literally thousands of containers on it but what we can see is only half of the problem indeed yeah the

Containers are a big problem but what really worries us today as well is what’s under the waterline there the commissioner wants to be clear he and his officers are well aare of the latest devious way drugs are being trafficked into Australia there are lots of cavities in these ships they’re

Called sea chests and other things and that’s where we’re seeing increasingly large quantities of drugs being hidden it’s called parasite smuggling concealing tons of cocaine and other illegal substances in underwater compartments on the hulls of ships we can search in a container quite easily we’ve been geared up to do that for

Years we haven’t been geared up to go under the water line and examine the Bott shipment is huge so we need to be do it in a very expedient way the rise of parasite smuggling has meant law enforcement has been playing a kind of catchup to drug importers but

Not anymore and Michael atam wants to show off the reason why the latest weapon in Border Force’s Armory a fleet of underwater drones so how long has that drone been in operation for just under 12 months and how many discoveries has it made in that time we’re w’t going

To exactly how many but in very recent times it’s made a major discovery of you know more than 100 kilos of NS under the water line on a vessel wow that’s significant it’s huge so it’s already worth its weight in gold absolutely you took the words out of my mouth and of

Course we have many ports around our 33,000 km a coastline and so we got to work out how to get more of this sort of Technology into more of our ports because this is a method that criminals are using to bring a lot of Narcotics into our country there’s an obvious element of

Nefar ious Ingenuity but parasite smuggling can also be a dangerous game in May last year a grim Discovery at the Port of Newcastle when the body of 31-year-old Brazilian diver Bruno bores was found floating in the water alongside him was 50 kilos of cocaine worth $20 million a failed drug drop has

Left a scuba diver dead and uncovered a mammoth cocaine Hall forges had been trying to recover the drugs which were hidden under a ship when he drowned you been doing this for a long time I have uh yeah straight out of school uh actually joined the Navy uh as

A clearance dver yeah did that for about 8 years um and then been a commercial diver for The Last 5 Years professional diver Jared Darcy says the area where Bruno Borges was diving under the ship was particularly dangerous on the Sea Chest you can get sucked against the Sea Chest you can get

Blown off it wow um and when you pinned against the Sea Chest the force there’s no way to get off and you will drown and that’s it game over that’s it position to make the already complicated dive even more perilous bores was using a detection avoiding rebreather which

Stops air bubbles being emitted Jared believes the device is a likely contributing factor to his death so a rebreather is a very technical piece of equipment depending on the type of rebreather he was using uh if he was using 100% oxygen rebreather that does have a depth limitation of about 10 m um

So if he was diving to collect a large quantity of drugs that would uh make him a lot heavier in the water and he could have easily surpassed the 10 m Mark which then uh the diver will go into a blackout and once you black out underwater the chance of drowning uh is

Quite High these are the risks people are willing to take yeah absolutely the drug trade people die they’ve got a immense budget um so whether it’s buying you know diving equipment with rebreathers um flying divers around the world to go and do certain jobs uh employing you know Technologies now to detect our

Surveillance um encryption of communications uh incredible sophistication you know we we’re really in a sort of an arms race here and is constant and we have to keep up with them yes it’s impossible to inspect them like Michael Aram nette van shelvin is in a battle with parasite Smugglers

She’s the director general of customs in the Netherlands and has been visiting Australia to share intelligence information with border Force so Nate how does the port here compare to what you’re used to in Rotterdam I imagine it’s much busier where you are oh yes oh yes the port of rdam is

Huge the Net’s beat includes Europe’s largest sea port Rotterdam as well as handling 500 million tons of legal Freight it’s estimated a staggering 50,000 kg of cocaine is smuggled through the port every year the Netherlands has been dubbed the cocaine Hub of Europe yeah it’s not exactly a title that law

Enforcement would want nope how does that sit with you well of course it saddens me it’s not only that we uh face all those stuns of cocaine coming into our Harbor but it’s the crime uh uh the crime that also comes with that the amounts are enormous but surprisingly in Net’s confident Dutch

Customs is winning the battle to stop the drugs through an increase in surveillance including the use of specialized dive teams targeting parasite Smugglers her officers are seizing more cocaine than ever a recent stud study revealed the dent they’re putting in the drug cartel’s operations we always thought it would be

About 10 or 20% that we stopped and arrest went through these uh scientific reports said no you are between 50 and 60 to 65% that’s being stopped in the harbor of Rotterdam the Dutch success is something Australian Border Force commissioner Michael atam is determined to emulate

But he knows he faces a tough task we’re currently only getting about 20 to 25% of the narcotics getting into our country so some 80% of drugs are still making their way through to the streets of this country roughly slumped in the seat of his luxury car executed in an ambush the

Cartels might be losing up to a quarter of their product to Police Operations but it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make Australia’s obsession with cocaine and other elicit drugs guarantees it’s still a lucrative trade it also means there’s little likelihood of a truce in Sydney’s deadly gang wars it’s the

Heartache that is left behind that they don’t think about you know a lot of these funerals that we’ve done every time I’m at the cemetery I always say the always say the mother day you know Ahmed harachi is an Undertaker at the Lemba mosque in Western Sydney it’s sometimes confronting but he often

Shares the despair of his job on social media especially when it’s a needless death of a young person just take one thing out of this my brothers remember that today you are alive and tomorrow you might be in the back coffin here being taken to the cemetery in July the killing of

25-year-old Ahmed al-azam was particularly devastating for him his father came into the washroom and his brother his only brother and the father helped wash his son think for a second this is the kid you raised all your life to my to be a young man now you’re washing him he’s lifeless you

You’re bathing him like a baby again but he’s not coming back he’s not a baby he’s dead Ahmed al-azam was shot multiple times as he sat in a car in a Suburban Street his family maintain he was an innocent victim of Sydney’s drug wars Ahmed harachi says their pain is

Intense a lot of collateral damage his dreams will never be reached he’ll never be married he’ll never have offsprings he’ll never have be a grandfather he’ll his father will never be a grandfather to his son’s kids the investigation into the murder of Ahmed al-azam is ongoing just like the cycle of violence he

Became a victim of you know the people who are actually Behind These drug trades ruthless violent um criminals and they’re running really evil sort of Empires and people are really suffering and some people are dying as a result of it and that’s not the only challenge Michael Aram faces he concedes drug

Cartels have now compromised every part of the supply chain from the shipping companies to the Port Authorities how widespread is the infiltration is the corruption within Australia with Australia is significant it’s a big problem um now I would say to the vast majority of people I deal with

In Industry they’re doing the right that we’ve identified in the last two years um looking into this problem about a 100 organizations and a thousand people that operate at the border that really worry us really and that’s what we can see so that’s very disconcerting it is disconcerting but it gets worse the

Commissioner’s most alarming admission is that he has concerns about some of his own offices there is no organization that can lay claim to be corruption free or corruption proof because organized crime need our information they want our information they want to know where we are when we’re going to be there what

We’re not looking at what we are looking at is gold for them and we realize the value of that it is an uncomfortable truth to learn as a member of the public to hear that from from you commissioner that that there’s likely corruption within your ranks 99% plus of the

Workforce are absolutely committed to the mission I’ve got 5,700 officers if just one of those officers just one is in the pocket of organized crime and they’re in a job where they can access certain sens of information that’s a big problem for us but ultimately Michael Aram is an

Optimist he’s sure the War on Drugs will eventually be won by the good guys Ahmed harachi hopes the commissioner is right over the past 20 years he’s buried too many victims his simple wish is for the violence to stop what impact is that the current crime wave having on the

Community honestly people are moving out people are selling their houses in these areas and moving out why because they can’t handle it anymore the devastation the aftermath the collateral damage all Left Behind nobody sees that the story is on the media once twice and that’s it no one sees what is left that

The family has to pick up the pieces and deal with we have our wives and our sisters and our siblings or walking in the street we don’t want a straight bullet to hit one of them and we’ve seen you know we’ve heard on the news some of these bullets have gone into childcare

Centers and stuff like that wow imagine a hit a child the innocent child hello I’m Sarah [ __ ] thanks for watching 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 minutes segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on

.com. and the N Now app