In May, as NSW detectives, federal agents and border force officers were advised by senior police that their work for Australia's leading waterfront crime taskforce would no longer be funded, one of the men they had arrested was preparing to plead guilty.
It is impossible to know whether stevedore and body builder Adam James Powell was involved facilitating drug importations for organised crime syndicates over the last decade.
![Adam Powell, 36 (left), was picked up this month as part of a joint operation between the Australian Federal Police and ...](/web/20160724175340im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/b/n/0/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqc5a3.png/1469275955224.jpg)
When the 40-year-old was sentenced last week in the NSW District Court to three years and 10 months in prison, it was in connection to trafficking a relatively modest amount of drugs: a kilogram of cocaine worth $275,000.
But law enforcement intelligence holdings paint a picture of a man who police suspect spent 10 years ruling his patch at Port Botany, accessing government cargo information systems and using a "small, tight crew" of wharfies to help international criminal syndicates, including one led by one of Australia's most wanted men, breach border controls.
![The Port Botany container terminal where Powell operated.](/web/20160724175340im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/c/e/7/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqc5a3.png/1469275955224.jpg)
With Powell's jailing last week – even if it was only for a kilogram of cocaine – police taskforce Polaris removed a suspected significant facilitator of organised crime on the NSW waterfront.
Powell's arrest on July 31, 2012 was more like a scene from The Bill rather than Scarface. When the Porsche-driving wharfie realised Polaris detectives were approaching him, he bolted on foot.
A detective raced him, crossing several major roads and entering a housing commission block in Matraville.
Powell darted down a dead end and, trapped against a fence, was arrested as he desperately sought to empty small bags of cocaine.
![Drugs and cash seized as part of the investigation.](/web/20160724175340im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/c/e/8/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqc5a3.png/1469275955224.jpg)
It was an inglorious moment for a man who once rubbed shoulders with suspected international drug trafficker Hakan Ayik, a Turkish-Australian who founded a huge importation business by the age of 32 by forging alliances with the Chinese triads, Indian chemical suppliers and the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang.
Before Ayik fled overseas fearing arrest in 2010, he was in regular contact with Powell – the pair trained together and shared a passion for body building and steroids.
Powell was a regular competitor in the Australian bodybuilding scene. He came second in the over 100-kilogram division of this year's Australasian Body Building, Fitness, Figure and Bikini Championships.
But police suspect Powell was also helping Ayik move drug-filled shipping containers past customs controls.
"There is a high probability that Adam Powell is a corrupt wharf worker who was involved in the importation of drugs through the Sydney ports ... dating back as far as 2004," a police intelligence file states. "It is suspected Powell or his contacts in the ports may be facilitating importations on behalf of Ayik."
When police searched Powell's home in 2012, they found his federal government Maritime Security Identity Card. In 2003, all port workers employed in jobs that could pose a threat to national security were required to obtain the cards. Those with serious criminal records or assessed as posing a terrorist threat would be denied a card.
Since then, federal and state police have unsuccessfully argued to the federal government that suspected organised crime figures should also be denied cards by allowing police intelligence to be assessed as part of an appealable vetting process.
Under the existing laws, Powell has been theoretically capable of keeping his clearance card up until his conviction this year.
When asked by Fairfax Media this week if Powell's removal from the docks would impact on the flow of drugs through Port Botany, a policing official laughed.
Despite major advances in Australian police methodology and operations that have seen state and federal agencies become respected, key players in global drug enforcement alongside the US Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI, the flow of contraband-filled containers into Australia continues largely unabated.
This is no fault of police, but rather evidence of the law of supply and demand. The huge and lucrative drug consumption market in Australia leaves our porous borders under constant assault by offshore suppliers.
When it was created five years ago, the Polaris taskforce was the first in Australia to dedicate itself to understanding how security gaps at national ports were being exploited by organised criminals. Polaris was quickly replicated in other states, leading to 130 arrests of maritime insiders such as Powell in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
More than 870 kilograms of drugs were also seized by Polaris, with a street value of more than $874 million, including more than 300 kilograms of cocaine and a similar amount of methamphetamine.
Detective Superintendent Ken Finch of the NSW Police's Organised Crime Directorate said the fight against "serious and organised crime" is a global issue that requires a co-ordinated approach across borders and jurisdictions.
"Despite the disbanding of Task Force Polaris, NSW Police Force is continuing to actively target and disrupt syndicates involved in crime on Australia's borders and combat drug trafficking in source countries," he said.
The federal government insists Polaris' winding up is because its resources and expertise are being assigned to new anti-organised crime operations.
But several well-placed sources say it is because no agency in the resource-strapped world of law enforcement wanted to stump up more funding. Whether the loss of a dedicated maritime crime taskforce will make life easier for whoever has taken over Adam Powell's Port Botany patch is unclear.
More certain is that Hakan Ayik – wherever he is hiding overseas – is unlikely to have retired from the drug importation business.
And Ayik still has friends left on the NSW docks.
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