How the Vietnam War spawned a drug smuggler with links to SA
Court papers reveal man’s long journey from troubled childhood in Southeast Asia to long prison term in Australia for 63kg of meth hidden in consignment of meat smokers from Cape Town. By
Adrug smuggling case in Australia has revealed a repeat convict’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to a refugee camp in Malaysia and on to Melbourne – where methamphetamine hidden in meat smokers was sent from Cape Town in 2021.
Minh Nguyen-Huynh was born in Vietnam around 1971.
He had three younger siblings and grew up in a province that a judge would later describe as “significantly affected by the war”.
Aside from the effects of war, NguyenHuynh had a difficult childhood. He was bullied at school and his mother was often absent because she had to work to support the family.
Fleeing in a boat
Eventually, with some cousins, NguyenHuynh fled Vietnam in a boat to Malaysia, where he spent time in a refugee camp before returning to Vietnam and getting a job in tailoring and the electrical sector.
In 1997 he arrived in Australia as a refugee, first touching down in Sydney and then Melbourne. He worked as a handyman.
Nguyen-Huynh is now the father of three children, aged 10, 13 and 15, and has a wife involved in the beauty therapy industry.
He is now also a prison inmate after being convicted in a fascinating transnational drug smuggling case that involves meat smokers and methamphetamine, and connects Australia to South Africa.
DM168 has previously reported on how Australian and South African drug syndicates work between the two countries.
Resin-coated statues
In a recent drug interception, three men from Sydney were arrested at the international airport there in mid-February for allegedly smuggling about 34kg of methamphetamine concealed in statues.
Australia’s Federal Police said two of the men arrived from South Africa and, when their belongings were searched, 22 resincoated statues were found. “An initial test of the statues returned positive for methamphetamine,” the federal police said in a statement.
Nothing was mentioned about the South African side of the investigation. This is not uncommon when Australian authorities announce arrests linked to South Africa – they do not reveal much about what they uncover related to this country.
In the matter that Nguyen-Huynh is central to, brief reference to South Africa is made.
Operation Jumbuck
Details of his background are contained in a court document related to the jail term imposed on him by an Australian court on 17 February this year.
Nguyen-Huynh, who was convicted after pleading not guilty in the drug importation case, was sentenced to 16 years in jail and will be eligible for parole after 11 years.
The investigation that led to his trial was codenamed Operation Jumbuck and was launched on 4 January 2021.
It involved Australian police tripping up the syndicate in which Nguyen-Huynh was involved – by secretly switching a stash of methamphetamine with pool salt.
According to a court document, the investigation began when a customs broker was put in touch with Australia’s Border Force.
At a facility where mail was screened, Border Force officers intercepted “three large boxes labelled multi-head packing machines air-freighted from South Africa via Hong Kong”.
Methamphetamine in meat smokers
When the shipment was examined, methamphetamine in vacuum-sealed packs was discovered “secreted within the lining of boxes that contained meat smokers”.
A joint media release issued last month, involving the Border Force among others, said the 63kg of methamphetamine, worth more than R146-million, was found in the meat smokers, which had been flown from Cape Town to Melbourne. This resulted in the launch of Operation Jumbuck.
According to NguyenHuynh’s sentencing document, police secretly switched the methamphetamine they had discovered with pool salt and took clandestine control of the delivery of the dud drugs.
“On 13 January 2021 the boxes were delivered to the consignee address by a police officer posing as a delivery driver,” the court document said.
“The delivery address was a lockup shed behind a residential property [in a Melbourne suburb] used by your co-accused to store building materials. It was kept under surveillance.”
Nguyen-Huynh and others were spotted at the shed. He was arrested soon after.
Ghost shipment
“This was an illegal shipment of moderate sophistication, involving concealing the illegal drug in 1 kilogram vacuum-sealed packages, secreted in the lining in three large boxes that contained meat smokers but were labelled as containing machinery,” the sentencing document said.
“The syndicate was using a technique known as a ‘ghost shipment’ where the illegal drug was hidden within a shipment that purported to be a regular shipment to Australia of products from a manufacturing company in South Africa.”
Nguyen-Huynh had been using a phone registered in a false name. The document also said he was “clearly trusted by unknown persons in the operation”.
Nguyen-Huynh previously, in November 2021, tried unsuccessfully to get released from custody on bail.
History of crime
According to a Supreme Court of Victoria decision linked to the bail application, there was another person accused in the case, Duc Quang Nguyen. However, a jury could not reach a conclusion about that person.
The Supreme Court documents said it appeared Nguyen-Huynh had “strong overseas connections”.
During his attempt to get bail, his criminal history dating back nearly two decades was disclosed.
The court papers said he had been convicted in a case involving “the offences of making a threat to kill and assault with a weapon” in 2004, and in 2011 he had been convicted in a fraud conspiracy case.
In 2012, the papers said, he had been convicted in Victoria in a matter that related to “trafficking in around six kilograms of methamphetamine with a potential street value of $6-million”.
The stash had been hidden in a child’s backpack.
For that, Nguyen-Huynh was sentenced to eight years in jail and was granted parole in 2017. His parole expired in 2020 and the following year, 2021, he was arrested in the case involving meat smokers and methamphetamine.
Key facilitator
Last month Australia’s Federal Police released a joint statement with other authorities about Nguyen-Huynh’s sentencing but did not name him.
DM168 established who the statement referred to by matching the date NguyenHuynh was sentenced, and other details in the statement, to those contained in court papers in his case.
The statement said: “[He] was a key facilitator in importing [the] methamphetamine [in meat smokers].”
In response to Nguyen-Huynh’s sentencing, Damien Appleby, a senior operations manager at the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, said the commission would work with authorities both inside and outside Australia.
“By continuously and tirelessly targeting key players, in collaboration with our partners, we continue to dismantle these criminal networks,” he said. DM168