Accused kingpin boastful
AN alleged cocaine kingpin boasted of links to Comanchero bikies and “understandings” with high-profile Gold Coast nightclubs to sell drugs, a court has heard
Alex John Arandale, 23, from Southport, also allegedly bragged his cocaine was smuggled into Queensland in cans of corn imported from Brazil and that he could sell a Glock pistol – the same weapon issued to Queensland police – for $12,000.
The extraordinary allegations have been revealed in Supreme Court documents following Arandale’s successful bid for release on bail last month on 14 criminal charges after his father put up a $20,000 surety.
Arandale referred to himself as “prince charming” or “prince” in tapped phone calls, the court was told.
He boasted to informants “that he had understandings with numerous nightclubs on the Gold Coast including Love, Sin City and Bedroom to sell drugs in the clubs”, court documents state.
Arandale had been behind bars on remand since his arrest on March 2 as part of a Taskforce Maxima operation targeting cocaine on the Gold Coast.
He has been charged with trafficking in cocaine between May 19 last year and March 3 this year, with the aggravated feature that he was a participant in a criminal gang or knew, or ought reasonably to have known, he was selling drugs at the direction of a criminal organisation.
He has also been charged with recruiting three men to join a crime gang, namely his own cocaine ring, and possession of knuckledusters, a “category M” weapon.
Police from the gangs squad allege Arandale was “the head of his own drug syndicate” and boasted to police informants he was “funnelling his drug profits through an Australian stock exchange share trading account to ‘make it legit’,” court documents state.
Police allege Arandale was unemployed and “living off … the sale of drugs” while running at least three street-level drug runners.
He allegedly said he had recently sold 500g of cocaine to a buyer for $170,000.
Police allege he started out by working for alleged cooffenders Chris Duspara and Onur Ada, who have both been charged with cocaine trafficking, but last year he “branched out on his own”.
He mostly sold from his apartment in Southport Central Towers, and preferred to use Snapchat to communicate rather than encrypted app Wickr, the court heard.
He boasted to police informants he also “pressed pills” to sell to the Comanchero bikie gang, the court heard.
On September 21, Justice Martin Burns ordered Arandale to be released on bail, provided he go directly to the Mirikai drug rehab centre in Burleigh Heads for at least three months.
On his release from rehab he must live with his pregnant girlfriend Stevie Joanne Owens in her mother Lyn-Marie’s $900,000 waterfront home in Helensvale.
Owens, who is a “property manager” with Harcourts real estate in Mudgeeraba, is due to give birth next month. She told the court she believed Arandale “only did drugs occasionally and was not addicted”.