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1.3 THE ROLE OF THE AFP

Scrutiny has recently started to focus upon the role of the Australian Federal Police, for a variety of

reasons. These range from the potential motivational forces in play with respect to complicity with

the Indonesian regime (see Proposition 2), to unresolved issues surrounding events to which they

must have been party.

The following aspects have all been previously reported through a diverse range of sources:

Police Corruption

Operation Mocha was a joint investigation by Australian Federal Police and the NSW Crime

Commission into a drug syndication ring. It embraced the cocaine shipment that landed at Sydney

airport at exactly the same time as Schapelle Corby landed. In fact, they overlapped by over 3 hours

[17].

The head of Operation Mocha was former Assistant director of the NSW Crime Commission Mark

Standen, who was later arrested for conspiring to import $160 million of pre-cursor drugs into

Australia [16] [10]. As operation head the sphere of his influence was clearly significant, although

details of exact actions remain vague.

Standen, an ex-AFP officer, had worked in the same office as AFP Commissioner Michael Keelty

[18] in Sydney. Whilst Keelty denied reports in ‘The Australian’ newspaper that he and Standen

were close [19] [20], he conceded that they ‘might’ have been involved in some of the same

operations [18]. Nonetheless, this clearly illustrates the seniority of Mr Standen.

Regarding the AFP, Ray Cooper, former AFP Internal Investigator, suggested that they resisted

investigation into police linkage to drug operations due to fear of reputational damage [28]: “I think

the leadership of the Federal Police were not capable or strong enough to conduct a thorough and

honest and open investigation. They were afraid of their reputation. They wanted the World to

believe they were the only police force in the World who didn’t have corruption.”

The Whistleblower

There is also the mysterious death of a so-called ‘whistleblower’ in 2002. Gary Lee-Rogers was an

Australian Protective Service assistant inspector, who complained about corruption that

compromised security at Sydney Airport and who predicted that he would be killed because of

what he had allegedly discovered [11] [13] [14].

The Statement to Indonesia

Then there are the astonishing statements made by the AFP commissioner, M ichael Keelty. It

doesn’t take too long to establish how damaging his media comments were to Schapelle Corby and

how helpful to the Indonesian regime, including in potentially covering their tracks with respect to

their many legal and human rights abuses [23].