A man police suspect was a mastermind of the Bali nine drug importation is living a life of luxury in Sydney while two junior members of his syndicate, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, await the firing squad in Bali.
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The man's lavish lifestyle is funded by a multimillion-dollar lottery pay out, which he won about the time the two young Australians, who acted as the local leaders of the syndicate in Bali, were being sentenced to death.
Former senior police sources said the man has previously been the subject of police drug trafficking investigations. He is believed to have halted his criminal activities after he quite literally won the lottery.
He is described in police intelligence reports as being suspected of high-level involvement in the syndicate that supplied the drugs carried by the Bali Nine mules. The syndicate is likely to have previously imported drugs into Australia.
The man now lives in Sydney and has escaped prosecution for any of his suspected criminal activities. He is believed to have won well over $5 million in the lottery several years ago, after the Bali nine members were arrested.
The extraordinary luck of the man underlines the rarely spoken reality of drug busts: those arrested are usually mid- to low-level players. More senior syndicate members ensure they are not hands-on and continue to traffic drugs once a courier or shore-party is arrested.
Chan and Sukumaran, who were dubbed by Indonesian authorities as the ring-leaders of the importation and who are facing imminent execution for their crime, have never revealed who they were working for, citing fear for the safety of their families back in Australia. It is possible that the pair do not know who were the ultimate organisers of the importation.
The pair had a low- to mid-level involvement in the trafficking for which they were convicted in 2006. Their roles included directing the Australian couriers in Bali.
Fairfax Media reported earlier this week that the portrayal of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran as the key figures in a heroin smuggling syndicate in April 2005 may have damaged their chances of a presidential reprieve.
Police have never arrested the suppliers, main organisers and financiers of the operation.
In 2005, police said they were pursuing "some very relevant avenues of inquiry" in relation to a syndicate that supplied the Bali nine and which was suspected of smuggling large amounts of heroin to Western countries.
Chan was 22 and had been living with his parents shortly before he was arrested in Bali. A Thai prostitute called Cherry Likit Bannakorn has been identified as the courier who delivered two suitcases of heroin to Chan in Bali. She remains the subject of an Interpol red notice but is also likely to be a relatively minor syndicate player.
On April 27, 2005, Indonesian police announced they had shot dead Man Singh Ghale, a Nepalese-born man with a long history of drug trafficking in Indonesia who they linked to the Bali nine operation.
Indonesian undercover drugs agents in Jakarta initially claimed they shot him as he tried to escape, but it emerged later his hands were cuffed behind his back at the time.
Months later, the AFP said that Man Singh Ghale was not the Mr Big in the Bali nine operation.
With Lindsay Murdoch
