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Ex-drug squad head linked to speed sales
By Peter Gregory
Chief Court Reporter
March 1, 2005
Former police detective sergeant Wayne Strawhorn arrives at the Supreme Court
yesterday.
Photo: Shannon Morris
The deputy head of the former Victoria Police drug squad sold drugs to criminal
gangs, a Supreme Court jury heard yesterday.
Chief Crown prosecutor Jeremy Rapke, QC, said Wayne Geoffrey Strawhorn, 49, made
money from trafficking drugs, obtained through unauthorised police purchases, to
the Bandidos motorcycle club and the group then headed by the late Lewis Moran.
He said Strawhorn, a police detective sergeant, was intimately involved in
operations that targeted the two groups using a "controversial" policy of making
controlled drug deliveries to criminals.
The policy involved the simple, but dangerous, practice of infiltrating criminal
gangs with police informers or undercover operatives, Mr Rapke said.
He said police could make a 6000 per cent profit on the black market through
sales of pseudoephedrine, used in the manufacture of amphetamines.
Normally, the drug was sold to criminals in the form of thousands of cold and
influenza tablets.
Mr Rapke said police could buy pseudoephedrine for $170 a kilogram, and sell it
on the black market for $10,000.
But Mr Rapke said a pure form of pseudoephedrine was sold to the Bandidos and
Morans in unauthorised transactions under Strawhorn's direction.
He said police had recognised that pure pseudoephedrine was an inherently
dangerous chemical.
He said it was thought to be totally inappropriate to have a controlled delivery
of the drug except in the most controlled circumstances. Mr Rapke said the aim
of authorised deliveries was to uncover secret laboratories used to make
amphetamines, and locate those involved in the illicit drug trade.
"Selling at black market prices guaranteed enormous profits for the police
involved and (provided) potential for corruption," he said.
Strawhorn has pleaded not guilty to five counts of trafficking pseudoephedrine,
one alleged to be in a commercial quantity, between October 28, 1999, and May
19, 2000. He has also pleaded not guilty to making a threat to kill a police
officer who was investigating police corruption.
Mr Rapke said the five transactions at the centre of the trial before Justice
John Coldrey were unauthorised and illegal.
He said it was alleged a police colleague, at Strawhorn's direction, obtained
5.5 kilograms of pure pseudoephedrine in five transactions with the drug
company. One police informer sold 3.5 kilograms of pseudoephedrine to the
Bandidos, while two other informers sold 2 kilograms to Lewis Moran's son, Mark,
who was later murdered.
Mr Rapke said evidence would be called that Strawhorn had made money out of the
drug trafficking, but it was difficult to ascertain the full extent of his
earnings.
"The accused's expenditure exceeds by a sizeable amount his known and
identifiable source of income," Mr Rapke said.
He said Strawhorn, when under suspicion, spoke with one informer involved in the
Moran transaction. Strawhorn told the informer to tell his colleague that if he
was interviewed, the Moran transaction "didn't happen".
Strawhorn allegedly wore a concealed recording device when he asked another
informer "Dorothy Dix" questions to have him deny that he (Strawhorn) was
involved in corrupt activity.
Mr Rapke said Strawhorn, in March 2003, made comments that his police career was
over, and he would have to kill an anti-corruption investigator because it was
the only way he would get satisfaction.
The trial continues.
