MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Police found 2.7 metric tons (3 tons) of cocaine on a property on Sydney’s outskirts in Australia’s largest-ever seizure of the drug, officials said Monday.
The drug was found on June 19 in plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semirural property in the suburb of Londonderry on Sydney’s western edge, the Queensland Joint Organized Crime Taskforce said in a statement.
The containers had false floors that provided access to the cocaine, which police estimate had a street value of 816 million Australian dollars ($572 million). Two Sydney residents, men aged 21 and 25, were arrested at the property and charged with possessing a commercial quantity of an illicit drug. They face potential sentences of life in prison.
Australia’s previous record cocaine haul was 2.34 metric tons (2.58 tons) seized in 2024 from a fishing boat near K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, off the Queensland state coast.
Police said the cocaine found in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state and Australia’s most populous city, landed by boat at Midge Point in the sparsely-populated Queensland tropics. They allege that a Sydney organized crime group transported the drug by road to the city, a distance of 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles), police said.
Police added that they suspect the shipment was landed from the same mother ship as 178 kilograms (392 pounds) of cocaine previously seized in Queensland. Six people have been charged over that cocaine and 142 kilograms (313 pounds) of methamphetamine that was also found in the investigation.
They suspect the mother ship to be MV Wealth, a Belize-flagged cargo ship that has been seized by authorities in Solomon Islands on suspicion of involvement in transnational organized crime.
The Solomons are 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Queensland.
Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay said organized crime groups were increasingly targeting Queensland’s 13,000-kilometer (8,000-mile) coastline to smuggle drugs.
Australians pay some of the world’s highest prices for cocaine, which makes Australia a lucrative market for drug traffickers.