Former boxing champ sentenced for dealing cocaine
Ex-world champion boxer Michael Katsidis has vowed to turn his life around for a second time, after pleading guilty to trafficking cocaine, just two years after he was sentenced in the same court for ice possession.
The father of four appeared in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on Thursday before Justice Catherine Muir where the court heard he carried on a business of trafficking in cocaine in Spring Hill over three months until March 18, 2022.
Katsidis lived at a cocaine “safe house” in Spring Hill between two and five nights a week and helped the drug ring by monitoring cocaine stocks and cash levels and was entrusted with the code to the safe containing 8g of the drug and $42,000 cash. He supplied cocaine on credit, the court heard.
“This is extremely serious offending committed by you as a mature man … with a relevant criminal history for drugs,” Justice Muir told him in sentencing him to four-years-andsix-months in jail, suspended after 668 days, which has already been served..
Katsidis has previous convictions for dangerous driving and attempting to pervert the course of justice, the court heard.
Crown prosecutor Lucy Ferguson submitted that the 43year-old had trafficked while on parole for ice possession, for which he was sentenced to two years’ prison with immediate parole release in the same court in October 2021.
His parole was cancelled and Ms Ferguson stated that Katsidis has spent 668 days in custody since April 2022, so should not have to serve more time behind bars.
Defence barrister Wayne Tolton submitted Katsidis was addicted to drugs when he was trafficking and was now clean from his drug habit and planned to live in Toowoomba, where he was born and raised, and live with his mum.
Katsidis had been addicted to drugs since the death of his brother Stathi, a champion jockey who died of a drug overdose in 2010.
Katsidis become the first Australian lightweight world boxing champion in 2007.