QANTASPORTER “TOM”

“He is identified only by the pseudonym Tom. In court documents revealed this week after police smashed the cocaine ring, he lurks as the character most likely to strike fear into the heart of a traveller. He is not Hurley, notorious underworld figure, or another one of the ac-cused - the high-flying former Macquarie Bank executive Ian Chalmers. Tom is someone rather less exotic but in a sense more sinister to the flying public: he was employed by Qan-tas at Sydney Airport. He may be there still, handling your bags.” Sydney Morning Herald, “Too Much Baggage” 14 May 2005

“Tom has never held a job or had a legitimate income. He was a cannabis smoker at school and on leaving he quickly moved into the drug trade as a supplier. His progression from small-time dealer to large-scale trafficker was swift. He became part of a network aligned to an outlaw motorcycle gang whose drug operations were centred in Adelaide but spread to most states and territories of Australia. As well as cannabis, Tom trafficked in ecstasy and cocaine. He carried a gun. Once he kidnapped another dealer who had ripped off his South Australian bikie drug suppliers and put him in a car for delivery to the Adelaide gang. Tom told a court that he never saw the drug dealer again but that he didn’t consider it a kidnap-ping because ‘He never asked to get out [of the boot].’ Arrested several times, Tom bribed police in the ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ to reduce or beat the charges and at other times bribed them for information they might have had about his activities or the activities of his associates. By 2000 Tom was selling cocaine supplied by Hatfield.” The Punch Magazine, June 2009, from an article by Clive Small, former Assistant Commissioner to the NSW Police

QANTAS, and the Australian Government, point-blank refuse to answer questions re the employment of long-term criminals like “Tom” as airport baggage handlers.