DRUG DEALER CHALLENGES ASSET GRAB

A NOTORIOUS Victorian criminal serving seven years jail for drug dealing
has challenged WA's tough criminal property confiscation laws in a bid to
keep his assets.

If successful, he would open big loopholes in the laws and could force the
State to abandon its efforts to take the assets of some convicted drug dealers.

Darren John Hafner, 36, pleaded guilty to heroin and methylamphetamine
charges after a joint operation between WA and Victorian police tracked his
efforts to supply drugs to WA dealers in 2001.

But the plumber refused to give up his assets, including a house in
Victoria, a Harley-Davidson motorbike, cash, jewellery and electrical
goods, and launched constitutional challenges to WA's laws.

His wife has also won Family Court orders in Victoria that have seen the
property transferred to her name.

Hafner's lawyer Stephen Shirrefs SC has told the WA Supreme Court that WA's
criminal property confiscation laws are unconstitutional.

In WA, the State can take the assets of anyone declared a drug trafficker
by the court.

Criminals are declared drug traffickers if they are convicted of possessing
or dealing in more than a set amount.

But Mr Shirrefs claimed the law was inconsistent with usual judicial power,
saying judges were simply required to "rubber-stamp" the confiscation
applications.

HE also argued that it was beyond the power of the State Government to
confiscate property outside WA. The Constitution only allowed the State to
make laws that affected the peace and good order of WA, he said.

University of Notre Dame law lecturer Ben Clarke said that success by
Hafner would undermine WA's property confiscation laws.

One argument would allow drug dealers to keep any property they had outside
WA while the other would mean being declared a drug trafficker would not
automatically allow the seizure of assets.

Hafner has been linked to some of Victoria's most notorious criminals,
including Mark Moran, the dead half-brother of recently murdered gangster
Jason Moran.

He was named at an inquest as the last man to see Mark Moran alive - at a
drug deal just before he was killed in his Essendon driveway in 2000.

The case is likely to be decided mid-year.