After almost five-and-a-half years, three Supreme Court trials and countless hours of legal argument, details can finally be revealed about the fate of the 10 men charged over the importation into Western Australia of 1.2 tonnes of methamphetamine, worth somewhere between $160 million and $1.1 billion.
At the time, December 2017, it was Australia's largest ever "meth bust" — the culmination of what was described by Australian Federal Police (AFP) as "the result of complex multi-agency investigation that traversed the country".
It all started in July of that year, when police got wind of a successful importation of methamphetamine, involving a mid-ocean rendezvous between an Australian boat called the Valkoista and an "Asian mothership".
That led to officers installing a secret recording device on the Valkoista which, months later in December, recorded the same thing happening again.
Those secret recordings were played to the multiple court hearings that followed, with an Asian voice heard saying "money, money" before the sound of thuds — bags of the drugs being loaded onto the Valkoista.
The key to the transaction — the "money, money" — was a half-torn $10 Hong Kong bank note, which each party produced to confirm their identities.
The Valkoista then made its way to the port city of Geraldton, where 59 bags of the drugs were transferred to a white hire van.
That's when the authorities pounced, with heavily armed police officers intercepting the vehicle as it reversed off the jetty.
The drugs were seized, and the half-torn bank note that was the key to the transaction was found among the possessions of one of the men who was charged over the importation.
Arrests across the country
In total, 10 men were accused of involvement in the drug operation.
Six of them were arrested at the scene – three members of the so called "boat crew" from the Valkoista, and three members of the "ground crew" who were picking up the drugs.
Another two men, who were alleged to have been going to collect some of the drugs, were taken into custody in Perth.
The final two accused were arrested in New South Wales in the following weeks, with one of them, Jabour Lahood, alleged to have been one of the main organisers of the whole importation.
The other was Peter Harb, accused of organising the ground crew.
Three of the 10 — the skipper of the Valkoista, Joshua Smith, one of the ground crew, Waseem Hermiz, and South Australian Sean Dolman, who was arrested in Perth – all entered early pleas of guilty.
While their initial sentencing hearings were held in open court, they were sentenced behind closed doors and the terms they received remain suppressed.
The remaining seven men all maintained their innocence.
Their first trial, in Western Australia's Supreme Court, started in March 2021, but after five weeks, the jury, which had hardly spent any time in court hearing evidence, was dismissed.
In the months that followed there were hours and hours of pre-trial legal argument, some of it in hearings that were conducted behind closed doors.
One of the men, Patrick Bouhamdan, who was on the Valkoista when the drugs were handed over, was given a separate trial.
Then a week before the scheduled retrial of the other six men, another accused, South Australian Stephen Baxter, walked free after the charge against him was dropped.
Drug transfer 'sheer chaos'
The trial of the remaining five men started in August last year.
The witnesses included Valkoista skipper Joshua Smith, a former oyster farmer from New South Wales, who detailed the late-night transfer of the drugs from the mothership in rough seas.
"That was sheer chaos, given everything that was going on," Smith told the court.
He said as he manoeuvred his vessel alongside the boat, there was shouting, and he saw seven or eight men of Asian appearance.
After the captain of the other boat made "sort of like a rectangular sign" with his hands, Smith said he saw Patrick Bouhamdan, who was on the Valkoista, get something from his personal effects.
"He retrieved a portion of a bank note. He put it through the Valkoista's window to where the other fellow [on the mothership] was," he said.
"The captain [of the mothership] gave a signal and there was flurry of action … hessian sacks, rice bags filled with stuff being thrown … onto the Valkoista."
Smith said the process took around seven or eight minutes.
"They just kept throwing them.
"I refuelled from the other boat, got as much as I could.
"We [then] separated the two boats, and I headed back east towards the coast of Western Australia."
Trial verdicts suppressed
The trial ran for three months and after deliberating over seven days, the jury convicted four of the men, including the alleged organiser, Jabour Lahood.
The fifth man, South Australian Christos Cafcakis, who was on the Valkoista when the drugs were collected, was acquitted of involvement and walked free from court.
He was the only accused man who elected to testify, telling the court he was on the boat because he believed he was on a fishing trip.
Mr Cafcakis, an events organiser, gave at times colourful testimony, referring to doing marketing work for events involving big names such as Kanye West, Pink, Shaggy and Coolio.
He claimed he was taken by surprise by the mid-ocean drug exchange, saying he was told by others on the boat "don't worry, it's not drugs", but that afterwards, he had his life threatened.
"[I was told] if I was to do anything stupid then I would be turned into fish food."
The verdicts of the jury were suppressed until the completion of the final trial involving Patrick Bouhamdan, who was also on board the Valkoista.
It took place over two-and-a half weeks with the jury hearing similar evidence as in the trial of the other five men, including the secret recordings from the Valkoista.
That jury deliberated for only two hours, before finding Bouhamdan guilty.
At the end of Bouhamdan's case, Justice Michael Corboy, who presided over most of the court hearings, thanked the lawyers involved in his case for their co-operative approach, saying the whole matter had faced a large number of challenges and describing its court history as "very long" and "tortuous".
Bouhamdan will be sentenced later this month, along with the other four convicted men — they all face possible life jail terms
For its part, The Valkoista, which was alleged to have been purchased specifically for the drug operation, was forfeited to the Commonwealth and the proceeds of its sale — $217,000 — put into a special account aimed at tackling crime.
