Other Aspects

There are also a raft of other strange or dubious events.

William Miller
One example is the Sydney man, William Miller, who claimed that a drug-dealing associate offered him $50,000 to collect a package from Sydney airport on the same day Schapelle Corby traveled [3]. But the plan apparently went awry when a baggage handler who was meant to remove the drugs at Sydney airport refused to touch the package because he feared police were watching.

Mr Miller wanted immunity from prosecution, but was also subjected to a media campaign to discredit him [4]. The AFP have shown no apparent direct interest in a person openly confessing to involvement in a major drug operation (with NSW Police apparently conducting only an informal cursory interview). You might well wonder how long you would remain on the streets if you made a similar claim tomorrow.

John Patrick Ford
There is the case of John Patrick Ford, who whilst on remand in Victoria, testified to the court that the marijuana had been loaded into Schapelle Corby’s luggage without her knowledge by baggage handlers in Brisbane, and should have been removed in Sydney. He stated that it was a bungled domestic transit operation on behalf of an alleged drug czar, Ronnie Verganza [27]. Shortly after his public stance, he was stabbed with a razor blade in jail [29].

A Precedent
There are also reported precedents. For example, there is the case of ‘Steve and Dee’ who on arrival in their Bali hotel found compressed marijuana in their bag [28] [29]. They contacted the Australian Consulate who advised them to flush the drugs down the toilet. Despite raising this incident during the Schapelle Corby case and despite it being confirmed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, neither the AFP nor any other police force contacted or interviewed them.

The Mocha Informant
It is an intriguing fact that the Operation Mocha informant, known as TOM, was registered on Dec 14 2004 [33]. As the Indonesians could hold Schapelle Corby for 60 days without charge, the expiry date was Dec 7th 2004. This suggests that perhaps TOM had been wrestling the morals of whether to report the syndicate. He is reputed to have done so, potentially risking his own life, because he had a "gutful" of a certain person: perhaps Schapelle Corby and her highly visible suffering at the time.

Open Access To Baggage
An aspect obvious from the outset of this case was that access to the baggage handling areas was almost wide open. Indeed, Ray Cooper, former AFP Internal Investigator, has stated that “And I can tell you that I've, we've done some operations on the Gold Coast, checking baggage, internal baggage if you like on domestic flights, and there was no control at the back of that airport, everyone, every man and his dog could access those baggages.”

Regarding the use of innocent passengers as ‘drug mules’ Mr Cooper confirmed that “Yes, it was well known, it was a well-known amongst the federal police that this particular operation and this particular strategy was being adopted by criminals.” [28]. He also confirmed that his concerns about corruption in baggage handling in Australian airports was never adequately investigated.

Quite apart from this, there are many other incidents regarding the behavior of baggage handlers themselves which cause significant concern. For example, the case shortly after Schapelle’s arrest when a baggage handler rifled through a passenger’s bags, removed a camel suit and then drove around the airport tarmac wearing it. This was witnessed by the camel suit owner who was flabbergasted [29].


Next: Conclusion and References

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The Role Of The AFP

Scrutiny has recently started to focus upon the role of the Australian Federal Police, for a variety of reasons. These range from the potential motivational forces in play with respect to complicity with the Indonesian regime (see Proposition 2), to unresolved issues surrounding events to which they must have been party.

The following aspects have all been previously reported through a diverse range of sources:

Police Corruption
Operation Mocha was a joint investigation by Australian Federal Police and the NSW Crime Commission into a drug syndication ring. It embraced the cocaine shipment that landed at Sydney airport at exactly the same time as Schapelle Corby landed. In fact, they overlapped by over 3 hours [17].

The head of Operation Mocha was former Assistant director of the NSW Crime Commission Mark Standen, who was later arrested for conspiring to import $160 million of pre-cursor drugs into Australia [16] [10]. As operation head the sphere of his influence was clearly significant, although details of exact actions remain vague.

Standen, an ex-AFP officer, had worked in the same office as AFP Commissioner Michael Keelty [18] in Sydney. Whilst Keelty denied reports in ‘The Australian’ newspaper that he and Standen were close [19] [20], he conceded that they ‘might’ have been involved in some of the same operations [18]. Nonetheless, this clearly illustrates the seniority of Mr Standen.

Regarding the AFP, Ray Cooper, former AFP Internal Investigator, suggested that they resisted investigation into police linkage to drug operations due to fear of reputational damage [28]: “I think the leadership of the Federal Police were not capable or strong enough to conduct a thorough and honest and open investigation. They were afraid of their reputation. They wanted the World to believe they were the only police force in the World who didn't have corruption.”

The Whistleblower
There is also the mysterious death of a so-called ‘whistleblower’ in 2002. Gary Lee-Rogers was an Australian Protective Service assistant inspector, who complained about corruption that compromised security at Sydney Airport and who predicted that he would be killed because of what he had allegedly discovered [11] [13] [14].

The Statement to Indonesia
Then there are the astonishing statements made by the AFP commissioner, Michael Keelty. It doesn’t take too long to establish how damaging his media comments were to Schapelle Corby and how helpful to the Indonesian regime, including in potentially covering their tracks with respect to their many legal and human rights abuses [23].

These include his statement during the legal process itself dismissing the baggage-handler proposition [21] [15]. The music to the regime’s ears as he made this remark is not difficult to imagine.

The president of Law Council of Australia himself felt moved to comment on this: “It is potentially damaging to the Corby defence, as it will no doubt be transmitted to Bali” [22], with Schapelle Corby’s lawyer referring to it as "an absolute disgrace".

The words "There is very little intelligence to suggest that baggage handlers are using innocent people to traffic heroin or other drugs between states" are easily translated to “do what you want with her, there will be no difficulties from the police at this end” in the context of the reality of Schapelle Corby’s situation.

It should be noted that the AFP (via Operation Mocha) were actually in the process of investigating the very thing which Schapelle Corby’s lawyer was suggesting, namely, baggage handlers “using innocent people to traffic heroin or other drugs between states”.

A Personal ‘Friendship’
The Chief of Bali Police, I Made Mangku Pastika, had previously been trained in Australia having “attended many AFP training courses” [12]. Indeed, Mr Pastika was reported as being “a personal friend” of Michael Keelty [12], head of the AFP at the time of Schapelle Corby’s case.

The Non-Investigation of a Crime
There are even the questions pertaining to non-investigation. On their own terms, surely “convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby” must therefore have been a drug smuggler. In which case, wouldn’t the AFP have had some sort of interest in the source of the drugs? Wouldn’t they have investigated openly and made arrests in Australia? This is particularly moot given the prominence of the case and its wider implications.

Perhaps they didn’t investigate because contrary to the impression their public comments created, they knew that Schapelle Corby was innocent. An investigation would not only have been a waste of time, but worse still, could easily shift focus to some of the murky aspects discussed elsewhere in this proposition.



The AFP were clearly integral to many of these issues, events and incidents. It has been suggested that Schapelle Corby was sacrificed to enable the AFP to secure a positive result with respect to its major operation ‘Mocha’. Having invested so much in this international project it isn’t difficult to see why they would wish to avoid media scrutiny at this critical time of the very same baggage handlers with respect to Schapelle Corby.

Clearly, however, there are plenty of other grave possibilities too, such as major corruption, gross incompetence, and political collusion or complicity.


Next: The Role of the Australian Government

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The Basic Elements

Rumors had been rife for years that drugs were passing freely through Australian airports courtesy of a corrupt baggage handling syndicate. This also included marijuana/cocaine drug combinations, for which a number of such international incidents had already come to light [9].

The Corrupt Baggage Handlers At Sydney Airport
Confirmation of the existence of corrupt baggage handlers working at Sydney Airport came via ‘Operation Mocha’, a joint investigation by Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the NSW Crime Commission into a drug syndication ring operating through that airport.

The syndicate was active on the very day Schapelle Corby flew to Bali, and whilst she passed through the airport [29].

The Consignment of Cocaine
It has since emerged, courtesy of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that a South American plane carrying a consignment of cocaine (and central to Operation Mocha) was definitely on the ground at Sydney International Airport at exactly the same time as Schapelle Corby passed through in transit to Bali [8][33].

The FOI data reveals that on 8th October 2004 Lan Airlines flight 801 with the drugs shipment on board landed at Sydney International Airport at 7:50 am while Australian Airlines flight AO7829, which Schapelle Corby and three companions traveled to Bali on, departed Sydney at 11:12 am. The overlap is well over three hours, with Schapelle Corby arriving at 7:30 am.

Operation Mocha and Qantas
Operation Mocha [5] [4] was headed by former Assistant director of the NSW Crime Commission, Mark Standen, who was later arrested for conspiring to import drugs into Australia [6] [7].

It has also been alleged that the Qantas security manager at the time was subsequently sacked because of connections with Michael Hurley, a fugitive alleged to have been a major player in an international cocaine ring [24][25][26]. A number of other Qantas staff and baggage-handlers were also stood down or sacked with respect to drug smuggling through the airport [35][36], and the consignment in situ when Schapelle Corby passed through.


The plot is therefore extremely thick: we have an international drug operation underway when Schapelle Corby’s almost empty bag passed through the airport, a consignment of drugs in situ at the terminal at exactly the same time, and a corrupt police officer running the show.

Even at this stage, the suggestion of coincidental occurrences is becoming rather far fetched.


Next: The Missing CCTV Footage

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