A jury is weighing a decision for two men accused of conspiring to import and possess close to a tonne of cocaine into Australia before their dramatic arrest in Serbia.
David Campbell, 53, and Tristan Waters, 40, were arrested in January 2018 after a meeting with undercover operatives at a luxury hotel in Belgrade, along with a third Australian, Rohan Arnold, who they are accused of conspiring with.
Authorities had allegedly found almost a tonne of pure cocaine, worth more than a billion dollars, concealed in steel beams from China inside a shipping container at Sydney's Port Botany the previous year.
The arrests and eventual extraditions came at the end of a globe-trotting undercover police operation.
Undercover officers posed as criminals who had happened upon a missing shipping container filled with cocaine, luring Campbell to New Zealand to retrieve it.
He had earlier imported it on behalf of his former mentor Arnold, for which he was being paid in steel cattle panels also contained in the shipment, as he had been previously, Campbell told the court.
By the time Campbell met an undercover operative in New Zealand he had been told some sort of "Chinese asset" was hidden inside the container.
He was recorded telling the undercover operative he does not know what was inside and it could be body parts for all he knew.
Campbell told the court he did not actually think it was body parts, but did not want to say it was something like gold.
Through encrypted group chats, Campbell, Arnold and other alleged conspirators including Waters eventually decided on a meeting in Serbia, where money would be exchanged before the drugs were transferred in Australia.
Campbell has told the court he only participated under duress due to threats to his family.
"If they don't find this thing, they are going to kill me," he was recorded saying on a phone intercept.
The jury has been directed to acquit him if they believe that, however not if the threats came from people he was voluntarily working with.
Waters has pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess the cocaine but has denied any involvement in its importation.
Prosecutors allege he is a high-ranking principal figure in a drug syndicate and rely on things he told the undercover operatives in Belgrade to prove it.
Waters is defending his involvement as an outside troubleshooter brought in to play the role of a "heavy" in the meeting and act as if he was a principal, which his lawyers say he is not.
"None of us knew where this was, everyone thought we all robbed each other," Waters said during the meeting.
He was relieved the container had been found and could end in-fighting with two other men, whose identities are unknown to the jury beyond their alleged handles on encrypted communication devices, but whom Waters appeared to know quite well.
Waters described the trio as "all high strung, aggressive individuals."
"I'm the most level headed out of the three," he said.
The jury is being asked to consider whether he was being truthful when he said those things, while lying about several other things to bolster his "heavy" image.
A jury of six women and six men have retired to consider a verdict.
