A DUTCH organised crime syndicate that allegedly planned to sell $120 million in drugs to the former NSW Crime Commission deputy director Mark Standen was linked yesterday to a Sydney drug gang that planned to manufacture $52.5 million worth of the methamphetamine ice.
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Watt and Spadina, both from Manly, were arrested in morning raids by police on their homes after a 2½-year covert operation involving police in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Britain, Belgium, France and the United Arab Emirates.
The arrests came after the arrest of 15 Dutch members of the accused Amsterdam-based gang in an operation in which the Australian Federal Police arrested Standen, 51, and the Blacktown food wholesaler Bakhos "Bill" Jalalaty, 45. A Briton, James Kinch, 49, was arrested in Thailand.
The court was told that Kinch, who is charged with Standen and Jalalaty with conspiring to import ephedrine in rice packets from Pakistan that was to be used in the manufacture of $120 million worth of ice, was the British go-between for Standen with the Dutch gang.
Four of the alleged Dutch gang members - Louis Aloysius Cornelis Weerden, 43, Jan Plas, 53, Michael Clemm Von Hohenberg, 43, and Thomas van den Berg, 46 - allegedly linked to the Standen drug conspiracy - were again named yesterday in court documents which alleged they had planned another big drug shipment to Sydney last year in a deal with a separate northern beaches drug syndicate.
Spadina was named by the federal police - in documents presented in evidence to the magistrate, Allan Moore - as the alleged head of the Manly drug syndicate.
