$90M DRUGS HIDDEN IN OVENS

Just after midday last Friday afternoon, outside a town house in South
Wentworthville, a container truck stopped. It was packed with
commercial kitchen equipment: devon slicers, sugar cane pressers, bone
saws, ovens, mincers and meat slicers.

It could have been the makings of the most valuable deli that Sydney
had ever seen but Federal police and customs officers got to the ovens
first, and removed, according to police sources, "enough smack to
satisfy every junkie in Sydney for a couple of months".

In what was the second largest heroin seizure in Australia's history,
146 700-gram and 350-gram blocks of high-grade heroin were found
hidden in the three commercial ovens - enough heroin to break down
into 3 million caps, police said. They put a street value of $90
million on the haul.

Drug investigations co-ordinator Mr Steve Emes said the container had
come from the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen and arrived at Port
Botany on July 7.

"Through intelligence we had received and information that the
Australian Customs had gleaned independently we knew that there were
some drugs on the container."

The container was searched by customs officers and Federal police and
a painstaking exercise was mounted to remove the 146 packages from the
oven lining and replace them with a "substituted material".

The container sat on the wharf at Botany until customs clearance and
on Friday a container truck left the port at 10.50am. When it arrived
at Wentworthville at 12.15 that afternoon a forklift was waiting to
take the equipment into the town house garage.

A 33-year-old Lidcombe man, the holder of a British passport issued in
Hong Kong, was later arrested and charged with knowingly being
concerned with the importation of heroin. He was remanded in custody
on Saturday and will reappear in Central Local Court this morning.

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"