ACC drops the ball over probe into drugs in sport
The Australian Crime Commission is covering old, unsubstantiated ground
- The Australian
- February 13, 2013
The best detectives from across Australia were seconded to work alongside lawyers, accountants, intelligence analysts and other ancillary experts.
Led by former NSW police officer and later Supreme Court judge Donald Stewart, the NCA carved up the organised crime landscape in a manner few thought possible.
No target was exempt from scrutiny: politician, police officer, lawyer or common or garden crook.
A former ALP immigration minister, the colourful Al Grassby, was charged with criminal defamation over the disappearance of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay.
So was the then head of the South Australian drug squad, chief inspector Barry Moyse, who was sentenced to a lengthy stretch in prison for his part in a drug corruption scandal.
I was one of the detectives seconded from the NSW Police to secretly investigate the relationship the disgraced drug squad boss had forged with known organised crime figures in SA.
But the NCA became a victim of its own success and took on more than it could handle. . Prosecutions fell away, the budget was slashed and the organisation lost its way. It became a political toy for successive federal governments looking for quick, cheap kudos from short-term operations that could generate publicity at a moment's notice.
Long-term operational plans were shelved as their media return was too slow for headline-hungry politicians.
The NCA stumbled through the 90s with an occasional, well-earned success but it never lived up to its early reputation and became an expensive, overrated crime fighting unit.
When Michael Costa became NSW police minister in 2001, he asked me, directly after I had given my evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into policing, what could be done to stem the tide of organised crime in NSW. Asian crime expert Richard Basham and I told Costa how the NSW police intelligence holdings had collapsed in the years when Peter Ryan was police commissioner.
Basham, a renowned academic and straight shooter, said, "The NSW police intelligence system is no more than a library stocking outdated books."
Gone was the innovation and the expertise that NSW Police had built through many decades. The national intelligence holdings had also declined as a result of the NCA losing its way. Costa took immediate action.
Basham and I were sent as emissaries to then prime minister John Howard for a secret meeting. We convinced Howard of Costa's desire for a bipartisan solution.
Not long after, the NCA ceased to exist and the new Australian Crime Commission came into being. With the appointment of Jock Milroy, a widely acclaimed former NSW homicide detective, as chief executive, the future looked bright. However, Milroy retired, Howard lost the 2007 election and the ACC soon took on a different complexion.
My first concerns were raised at the bold claims of alleged massive taxation fraud by several prominent Australian entertainers including Paul Hogan. The ACC accused Hogan, in the safe confines of the Federal Court, of tax crime and fraud on a massive scale.
The damage to Hogan was incalculable and took many years to subside after the ACC was forced into publicly withdrawing those claims.
It confused many, including me, that the ACC had embarked on the prosecution of alleged tax avoiders rather than organised crime groups that posed a much greater threat to society.
Then there was the recent so-called ACC special investigation into the illegal firearms market in Australia, which the ACC concluded was the result of thefts within Australia of legal firearms and interstate trade in illegal weapons. This meant responsibility fell squarely on the states, not the federal government.
That was despite NSW Police detecting a record 300 Glock semi-automatic pistols ambling through Customs to a suburban Sydney post office, where it appears they were sold to criminals.
It appeared to many that the calculations used by the ACC to dismiss illegal gun importations as a factor in the long-running Sydney shooting sprees was seriously flawed.
It also seemed to get the Gillard government and media-savvy Justice Minister Jason Clare off the hook as far as who was responsible for the outbreak of gun violence across the country.
But that report paled into insignificance when compared to Australian sports' "Armageddon Day", last Thursday, and the release of a 12-month "investigation" by the ACC.
Flanked by the earnest-looking Clare and Sport Minister Kate Lundy, an even more earnest-looking ACC chief executive John Lawler outlined what everyone with an IQ over 20 already knew. Customs and Border Protection agencies were seizing record amounts of performance-enhancing drugs destined for, wait for it, athletes. There were also groundbreaking revelations that organised crime had become involved.
Really?
That should shock no one as it is probably one of the few areas organised crime had not got its hooks into until federal law enforcement agencies spectacularly dropped the ball in the past five or six years protecting our borders.
I, like many others, waited keenly for the Lance Armstrong moment, when a prominent athlete would be led away in handcuffs.
It never occurred and probably never will.
But maybe there would be video evidence of a sporting team bus carrying five Glock pistols, a Heckler & Koch sub-machinegun and a bag full of cocaine. Nope, no such smoking gun.
What I did notice were some very bewildered sporting code executives with looks on their faces that said: "Why am I here and where is the evidence I can take back to my board to explain the enormous damage you have just done to our sport?"
The dust has now settled and questions are being asked about the veracity of the allegations and the timing of this "event".
Both the NSW and Victorian police forces have been quoted in recent days as having suspended any further inquiries related to the ACC report.
I don't suggest for one minute that ACC's revelation came as the Gillard government was reeling from Act IV of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption sellout play, "The Obeids", and the emerging scandal of "Thredbo-gate" - how a couple of prominent Gillard government ministers took advantage of free skiing at one of our most expensive playgrounds.
I can only conclude that the ACC has lost its way and has become irrelevant for a country awash with mind-altering substances, illegal firearms and massive unexplained wealth of a growing number of individuals.
That is what the ACC should be investigating - not regurgitating old intelligence files that state police forces previously have discarded as unreliable or unsubstantiated.
Tim Priest is a former NSW detective sergeant.
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