Organised criminals are ‘trusted insiders’ in some of Australia’s biggest freight firms

This is an important article from Australia about how organized crime infiltrates legitimate businesses and supply chain stakeholder companies. Australian Government is doing a good job to stop these activities.

This criminal modus has been known for a long time and the best way to attack it is through structured partnerships and cooperation with trade.

Everybody in the entire supply chain need to know the risks involved and how to minimize being infiltrated.

In addition, it is essential to implement early warning systems inside the supply chain – and within its stakeholders – to ensure and maximize detection of patterns revealing somebody on the inside bekng involved in criminal behaviour. This can be done through modern Authorized Economic Operator concepts.

The article states, that Intelligence gathered in multiple policing probes has found leading Australian freight, logistics and transport firms are being infiltrated by organised crime groups and bikies to import drugs and illegal tobacco then distribute them around Australia.

The information comes as Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw will on Wednesday reveal that the cracking of the encrypted An0m app used by criminals has led to the arrest of 29 “trusted insiders”, including people working in “freight forwarding and logistics companies, couriers, trucking firms” and at “ports, airports and mail centres”.

“Intelligence reveals trusted insiders charged fees between 15 to 25 per cent of the drugs they were moving around the country,” Mr Kershaw will say in a speech to the National Press Club.

“Baggage handlers and postal workers” were having their assets targeted by police via proceeds-of-crime orders, he said, warning that “workers who have knowledge of logistics chains and facilitate crime” were being “methodically” identified by his agency.

Mr Kershaw will also reveal that at least 20 of the 29 insiders arrested previously held aviation or maritime security identification cards, giving them access to sensitive border sites. And he will say that “lawyers, accountants, and some government officials have been identified as enablers of Australia’s multibillion-dollar drug-trafficking industry”.

You can read the article here: Organised criminals are ‘trusted insiders’ in some of Australia’s biggest freight firms

Source: TheSydneyMorningHerald