Cannabis cartel alleged

Defendant only sold gardening equipment: Lawyer

VARSITY Lakes hydroponics worker Paul Desmond Wayne Joseph has allegedly been caught up in a commercialscale cannabis operation run from a Brisbane home.

Court documents reveal a Drug Task Force 2 investigation into the operation involved informants, phonetaps, stake-outs of Joseph’s Hyalite Hydroponics warehouse and at least four search warrants.

Joseph, 41, has been charged that on or about June 20, 2017, he unlawfully produced cannabis at 25 Maitland St, Salisbury.

His lawyer, Jonathan Nyst of Nyst Legal, said yesterday Joseph intended to defend the charge. “The allegation against Mr Joseph is simply that, as an employee of a gardening equipment retailer, he sold gardening equipment to a customer who subsequently used that equipment to grow cannabis,” Mr Nyst said.

“It’s not asserted he actually took part in cultivating anything, only that he sold the equipment in the course of his employment.”

But as Joseph and his defence team defend the charge, they will have to do it without all of the information police claim to have. Magistrate Donald MacKenzie dismissed Joseph’s application to disclose redacted items associated with six search warrants after hearing the application in the Southport Magistrates Court on August 3.

The warrants were for Joseph’s Varsity Lakes warehouse, and homes at Arundel, Inala, and Salisbury, where it is alleged cannabis was grown.

Of 25 items Joseph wanted disclosed, Mr MacKenzie decided to release three.

Drug and Serious Crime Group’s Detective Superintendent Jon Harold Wacker, in an affidavit to the court said redacted information would reveal informants and expose investigation techniques.

“Based on the direct evidence and expert opinion of Jon Harold Wacker, (disclosure) would so prejudice ongoing current investigations and prosecutions,” Mr MacKenzie’s decision reads. “Many of the subject redactions are obviously references to named informers and are duplicated in the several applications.

“However, in some of the items, inferences have had to draw, that should the redacted information be released, there would be a probable exposure of the identity of the informer.’’

Joseph is to appear in the Southport Magistrates Court for mention on August 30.