A man sentenced for his role in a conspiracy to get control of a billion-dollar cocaine stash will spend at least a decade behind bars, despite only joining the scheme as a late-stage "facilitator".
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Tristan Waters pleaded guilty in May 2023 to conspiracy to possess a commercial quantity of cocaine.
The 40-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in jail, with a non-parole period of 12 years, in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court on Friday.
Waters will first be eligible for release on parole on January 15, 2030, with the sentence backdated to the time of his arrest.
He was arrested in January 2018 along with fellow Australians David Campbell and Rohan Arnold following a meeting with undercover operatives at the luxury Metropol Hotel in the Serbian capital Belgrade.
The arrests and eventual extraditions came at the end of an undercover police operation, during which officers posed as criminals who had happened upon a container full of drugs in Australia that belonged to an international syndicate.
Waters likely joined the scheme at "a very late stage" to facilitate the return of the drugs through a money exchange to take place at the meeting in Belgrade, the court heard,
Judge Phillip Mahony described the syndicate as a "sophisticated, co-ordinated, premeditated, clandestine and diversified operation".
"The highly sophisticated operation bespoke of a highly organised criminal enterprise, the principals of which were based in Colombia, with the capacity to operate in countries around the world including Australia, Thailand and Serbia," he said while sentencing Waters.
"Whilst the offender may not have known the exact quantity, he knew it was a very large quantity of border-controlled drugs, that the syndicate were trying to regain possession of."
Authorities found more than a tonne of high-purity cocaine blocks concealed in steel beams from China inside a shipping container at Sydney's Port Botany in 2017.
The estimated street value of the haul was up to $1.5 billion.
Before his arrest, Waters was a director of a construction company in Dubai and had previously run a successful building firm in Canberra.
Following his arrival in Dubai in 2016, Waters began using cocaine and drinking heavily on a daily basis, with his drug use spiralling to a $5000-a-week habit.
He also used Xanax and Valium to help him sleep, the court heard.
Waters spent a year behind bars in Serbia, during which he unsuccessfully fought his extradition to Australia.
Arnold was jailed in 2020 for a minimum of 19 years and six months after pleading guilty over the import.
Campbell was convicted of conspiring to possess a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug but acquitted on the importation charge.
Australian Associated Press
