Charles Miranda - Deception. The True Story of the International Drug Plot that Brought Down Australias Top...

CHARLES MIRANDA has been a journalist for more than 20 years, working in both newspaper and radio. In 2004, he co-wrote My Brothers Keeper, a bestseller about the notorious Bra Boys surfing family. Currently managing editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, he was formerly the crime and foreign affairs correspondent, and the London-based European Bureau Chief for News Ltd newspapers. He broke the Mark Standen story.

CHARLES MIRANDA

First published in 2012

Copyright Charles Miranda 2012

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Allen & Unwin
Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74175 964 8

Set in 11/15 pt Utopia by Post Pre-press Group, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

European players

Australian players

Operations

Organisations

31 May 2006
The new-model Mercedes-Benz races along the motorway in the Netherlands towards the Belgian border. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Franois thinks about his future. Only a few years ago he and his family were forced to flee their home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa and seek asylum in Europe.

Now the former Congolese senior government official is about to enjoy untold riches, courtesy of his war-torn former homeland. In the boot of his car are three large canvas bags that once carried flour, but now conceal 92 kilograms of the chemical ephedrineenough to make about $20 million worth of the deadly party drug methamphetamine, also known as ice.

Its only a sample.

Franois sees himself simply as a salesman, showing buyers in Antwerp a sample of what he and his contacts in the Congolese capital Kinshasa can produce on demand. If all goes well there will be many showings, he thinks.