Australian police seize biggest-ever methamphetamine haul with street value of £600m

Eight men charged in Geraldton over 1.2bn-tonne drug bust

US Border and Customs Protection are holding a truck driver in custody after officers found $13 million worth of methamphetamine hidden in a trailer of frozen strawberries he was hauling from Mexico to the United States. (Australian Border Force/AP)

Australian police say they have made the country's largest seizure of methamphetamine - a 1.2-tonne haul with a street value estimated at 1.04 billion Australian dollars (£600m).

Eight men, all from Australia, were charged as a result of the bust in the West Australian coastal town of Geraldton, after what police called a “complex, multi-agency investigation that traversed the country”.

A press release issued by a combination of five law enforcement agencies, including the Australian Federal Police, said the seizure surpassed the previous record meth bust, a 903kg haul in Melbourne early this year.

It is also the largest drug bust of any kind in Western Australia, the country's largest state with almost 8,000 miles of coastline.

Police said the drugs had been transported on a private boat that docked in Geraldton in the early hours of Thursday morning and loaded into a van. Police intercepted the vehicle as it reversed from the dock.

Police arrested three men in the van, a further three on the boat, plus two more in a hotel in Perth, culminating a five-month operation that dismantled a complex drug trafficking network.

Fifty-nine bags containing some 20kg of methamphetamine each were seized from the vehicle. An additional bag containing approximately 20kg of methamphetamine was found on the vessel.

The three men on the boat and the two seized at the Perth hotel were charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug.

The occupants of the van were charged with possessing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug reasonably suspected of having been unlawfully imported. Both offences carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Federal police will allege in court these men intended to distribute the drugs along the east coast of Australia, said federal police Deputy Commissioner Operations Leanne Close.

Police did not say where the meth came from before reaching Geraldton.

AP