Australian businessman David Campbell arrested in Serbia as part of $1.5billion cocaine smuggling syndicate is jailed for 18 years

An Australian businessman arrested in Serbia as part of an international drug operation involving a 1.28 tonne shipment of cocaine has been jailed for 18 years.

David Edward John Campbell, 54, was arrested outside the Metropol Palace Hotel in Belgrade in January 2018 and was sentenced on Friday.

Campbell worked as a lookout for two other Canberran businessmen trying to recover the cocaine from a rival criminal syndicate, who were in fact undercover agents who had intercepted the cocaine.

The cocaine had a street value of $1.5 billion and at the time of his arrest Campbell was armed and “prepared to kill an undercover police officer,” a judge found.

The shipment of 2,576 blocks of cocaine was stopped before it reached Sydney.

Campbell was found guilty in 2023 of conspiracy to possess a commercial quantity of imported cocaine in NSW Court of the District.

Judge Phillip Mahony SC sentenced him on Friday to 18 years in prison with a non-parole period of 10-and-a-half years, reports the ABC.

Serbian authorities arrested Campbell and his two Australian business partners in Belgrade

Their cocaine had been seized by undercover agents who posed as a rival cartel and offered to sell the cocaine back to them

The cocaine was sent to Australia by a Colombian drug cartel that hid the blocks in a Chinese batch of prefabricated steel structures.

After the cocaine went ‘missing’ in 2017, Campbell was bought into the plot former business partner Rohan Peter Arnold, to help retrieve it.

The undercover police posed as a rival cartel claiming to have found the drugs in New Zealand.

For his part, Campbell was overly loyal to Arnold, Judge Mahony said.

Campbell knew Arnold through “their longstanding and legitimate business relationship over many years,” which Arnold exploited, the judge said, “ostensibly out of misplaced loyalty.”

Judge Mahony added that Arnold, who was known as the ‘Australian King of Steel’, warned Campbell that the cartel and their Chinese affiliates were ‘hounding’ them if they failed to retrieve the cocaine.

The court heard Campbell was being surveilled by cartel members who also sent him photos of his family, leading to ‘unapologetic coercion’.

The former businessman voluntarily traveled to New Zealand in 2017 to recover the missing cocaine.

Judge Mahony said Campbell went with Arnold to Serbia for the same reason where they met another Canberran businessman, Tristan Egon Sebastian Waters, 40.

Waters, who lived in Dubai, had traveled to Serbia to help the pair in their mission to recover the cocaine, where he also bought a gun for Campbell in Belgrade.

All three were subsequently arrested in Serbia, where Campbell subsequently served a six-month prison sentence for possessing the gun and thirteen bullets before being extradited to Sydney, where he stood trial in 2023.

Campbell was acquitted by a jury of conspiring to import a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug, but found guilty of participating in a conspiracy to possess the cocaine.

Serbian authorities found a gun and a significant amount of cash during the arrest

His counsel told the court during his sentencing this year that their client had been used by the cartel and considered ‘completely unnecessary cannon fodder’.

The lawyer agreed that Campbell was a ‘messenger boy” and a “low-level official,” as evidenced by his exclusion from encrypted cartel chat groups.

However, prosecutors disputed this belief, arguing that Campbell was in fact ‘a reliable, high-level ‘facilitator’ who plays a ‘critical’ role.

They also argued that Campbell’s claim that he acted under duress was “completely unbelievable.”

Judge Mahony agreed with prosecutors that Campbell was more than a “messenger boy’, but that he was indeed still a low-level player.

The judge also said that there was ‘non-exculpatory coercion,” as evidenced by a high-ranking cartel member who called him a “mutt” in a message where they also suggested Campbell should be killed.

“David needs to be beaten, this mutt, no matter what,” the message read.

Campbell was extradited back to Sydney. He will be eligible for parole in 2028

Judge Mahony added that Campbell had “countless opportunities” to report cartel threats to police which he did not take advantage of in the three months he was involved with the syndicate.

“His voluntary act of traveling to New Zealand for the first meeting, his continued involvement in the coded messages and his voluntary willingness to go to Belgrade,” he said.

“His acquisition of a firearm in Belgrade and also the ample opportunity he had to contact the authorities over a period of about three months.”

Campbell’s original recommended sentence of 22 years was reduced to 18 years due to the duress he was under and the harsh prison conditions he faced following his extradition during the Covid-19 pandemic.

With time already expired, Campbell will be eligible for parole in July 2028.

Waters was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison with a non-parole period of 12 years after pleading guilty to participating in a conspiracy to possess cocaine.

Arnold was sentenced in 2020 to 27 years in prison with a non-parole period of 19 years after plea guilty of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of cocaine.