POLICE RAN DRUG CARTEL, COURT TOLD

A drug cartel had operated within the Victoria police force for at
least a decade, counsel for a confessed drug trafficker told a Supreme
Court judge yesterday.

In pre-defence submissions, the defence counsel, Mr Brian Cash, said
Peter Pilarinos, 45, would say that Kevin John Hicks, a "pitiful"
former drug squad detective he bribed to obtain keys to a police drug
compound, was "but a minnow" and subservient to other corrupt officers.

Mr Cash, before Justice George Hampel, said Pilarinos made a statement
to the Victoria Police to tell its ethical standards division about
the alarming extent of corruption in the force.

Pilarinos would say a drug cartel operated within the Victoria police
drug squad and among other officers, and he had been involved with
corrupt police officers on a weekly basis for 10 to 15 years, Mr Cash
said.

He said Pilarinos would now be seen as an informer of some
description. Pilarinos was in fear of his life, had received death
threats and invited the holding of a royal commission.

"He is doubtless a key candidate to be killed in or out of prison," Mr
Cash said.

Earlier this year, Pilarinos, of St Clems Road, East Doncaster,
pleaded guilty to bribing Hicks, 45, of Lima East, near Benalla,
between January 1992 and May 1993.

He also pleaded guilty to amphetamine trafficking, burglary and the
theft of drugs and chemicals from the police storage compound at Ashwood.

Hicks pleaded guilty in a separate hearing to receiving bribes, theft
and burglary.

Yesterday, Mr Cash said Hicks held the whip hand over Pilarinos, who
was compelled by profit, but could have been arrested at any time.

He said the security arrangements at Ashwood regarding drug storage
were so inept as to be unbelievable. He said no one was permanently
stationed at the compound, visitors' records were not kept, locks and
keys were not sophisticated.Mr Cash said Pilarinos was put up to
public ridicule by newspaper reports wrongly describing him as a drug
baron. Pilarinos accepted he had been a petty criminal, but the amount
of the bribe money paid and quantity of drugs produced and sold was
unknown. There was no evidence that Pilarinos had sold a trafficable
quantity of drugs.

Mr Cash said it was alleged Pilarinos was pressured by others not to
plead guilty to the charges or give evidence against Hicks and he
would be looked after. Earlier, he said Pilarinos was told: "I'm sure
you won't like to go on a picnic with Denis Tanner. Like others, you
won't come back from (the) picnic."

He said Hicks had worked with a man named Denis Tanner.

Pilarinos' son, Mr Christopher Pilarinos, said family members had been
bashed and handcuffed at the family home. The proceedings will
continue today.

The assistant secretary of the Police Association, Senior Sergeant
Paul Mullet, yesterday described the claims as an exaggeration.

He said there was "absolutely no need" for a royal commission into
police corruption.

"There are, as has been evidenced, individual cases of corruption
within our membership. It's only the real minority that unfortunately,
as bad apples from time to time, bring into question this issue," he
said.

A spokesman for the State Government said he would not comment on any
issue before the courts.