Iwas sitting in the Crime Command conference room in St Kilda Road when I first heard the name Tony Mokbel. It was November 2000, and I was there to discuss Victoria Police’s most secret operation of the time.

On September 4, a Serbian company had accepted an order from a Melbourne firm for ceramic products to be shipped from Montenegro. Inside container ITLU6961134 were 22 barrels of ephedrine with a weight of 550 kilos capable of producing 40 million ecstasy pills with a street value of $2 billion.

The Melbourne syndicate had paid $10 million for the drugs.

I had been tipped off that the container had arrived and that is why I had been summoned to the crime department for a meeting led by commander Rod Lambert. We were there to make a secret deal. I was to sit off the story in return

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