Jail over bringing drugs in

A PORT Douglas man who conspired with a former Sydney playboy to import packages of pseudoephedrine into Australia from Kenya has been handed a seven-year jail sentence.

Peter Mitchell, 61, acted as Australian point man for Mark Coulton, the former owner of Sydney’s Hard Rock Cafe, as they co-ordinated six packages to be sent through the post containing more than 3kg of the drug which is used in the production of methylamphetamine.

Coulton, who was handed an eight-and-a-half-year jail term late last year, was based in the UK during the dealings between August 2014 and April 2015. He was extradited to Cairns early last year.

The Cairns Supreme Court heard yesterday he and Mitchell had been “longstanding associates” when they cooked up the scheme. Mitchell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pretraffic a commercial quantity of a controlled precursor and attempting to import a bordercontrolled substance.

The packages were sent through the mail and one sold for more than $32,000 profit. Three were sent to Port Douglas woman Jill Skinner, who was jailed for two-and-a-half years last October for her part.

Code words including “wine”, “rosé” and “Redbull” were used in place of drug names and picked up through a series of telephone intercepts performed by police.

Justice Jim Henry said it was clear Mitchell’s role was significant and he wasn’t just a “servant blindly following Coulton’s instructions”.

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