|
 Malcolm
Rosenes
Rosenes was placed in an
orphanage after losing his mother when aged three, and had spent his childhood
in institutions.
He joined the force at 22 and had received four
commendations.
On
October 11, 1988, Det-Sgt Malcolm Rosenes was a member of the surveillance team
watching the Narre Warren home of convicted armed robber, Graeme
Jensen, just before
Jensen was shot on the eve of the Walsh
Street murders.
Jensen was suspected of being
involved in an armed robbery the previous July in which security guard, Domic
Hefti, was killed at a Coles supermarket in
Brunswick in an exchange of fire.
By the time
Detective Sergeant Rosenes reported for duty, on October 11, 1988, Operation
No-Name had been under way for nearly six hours.
Under
surveillance was armed robbery suspect Graeme
Jensen at a house in Moray
Court, Narre Warren.
Eight armed robbery squad detectives
had been in position from about 7.30am - but they could not act until they were
sure the man in the house was their target.
What they needed was for the suspect
to come out so they could confirm his identity.
That was the job of the surveillance
police.
They decided to use a textbook
"box intercept" - when Jensen drove off, the detectives would use
three cars to snare him.
A car would pull up on each side,
their noses slightly across the suspect's vehicle.
The third car would block the rear.
That was the plan.
Jensen was no early riser - career criminals rarely are.
He had breakfast in bed then rose
about midday to watch a movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Rosenes knew the target well; he was
one of a gang of suspected armed robbers, including Jedd
Houghton and Victor
George Peirce, whom police had been watching since May.
Rosenes was sitting in a silver
Nissan sedan reading his paper when Jensen finally surfaced at 3.20pm.
Jensen needed a new spark plug for his lawn mower.
It took him only three minutes to
drive 2.4 kilometres to the nearby shop.
Two surveillance detectives then
wandered into the shop to confirm the suspect was
Jensen.
Three unmarked police cars
containing the eight armed robbery detectives cars barrelled in.
But the third car, slowed by passing
traffic, was a few seconds late.
This enabled
Jensen to gun the motor and hit reverse.
Police later gave sworn evidence
that they saw Jensen had a firearm on his lap.
They yelled at him to stop.
He clipped a car as he reversed out
of the Webb Street shopping strip, then flung the automatic into forward.
One detective yelled: "He's got
a gun."
Two members of the
armed robbery squad fired seven
shots at him as he drove away from them.
He was hit by a shot
gun pellet in the back of the head and died before his car crashed into an SEC
pole.
What happened then remained a
matter of conjecture for years....
An armed robbery squad detective
went to the boot of his car and grabbed a towel.
He gave it to a second detective,
who said he found a sawn-off bolt action .22 rifle next to Jensen's legs.
It was not cocked, not loaded and
the magazine was upside down.
Two bullets were also found on the
floor.
It was later claimed the towel was
used to hide the gun taken from the police car to plant in Jensen's station
wagon.
Police said it was to cover Jensen's
body from public view.
The towel was later destroyed
without being tested for gunshot residue.
Police later claimed
that when they had approached Jensen and identified themselves, he pointed a
firearm at them and attempted
to run them over with his car.
Next day, two police constables,
Steven Tynan, 22, and Damian Eyre, 20, were gunned down in Walsh Street, South
Yarra, in what detectives maintain was a payback for Jensen's death.
Victor
Peirce, Trevor
Pettingill, Anthony
Farrell and Peter McEvoy were charged with the Walsh
Street murders.
They were acquitted.
But with regard to Jensen's
involvement in the Brunswick robbery and shooting, the police waiting in Narre
Warren were chasing an innocent man.
Jensen was not even there when Hefti
was killed.
Forensic
tests done after his death, proved that Graeme
Jensen was not the man who pulled the trigger in the robbery and police at the
inquest have admitted that there is
now no evidence to link him to the crime.
An inquest into Jensen's
death heard that the surveillance team had acted like the 'three wise
monkeys' over the shooting.
Rosenes told the court it
was not the surveillance team's role to become involved in the actual arrest of a suspect.
He denied it
was a "series of coincidences" that members of the bureau carrying out
surveillance did not see Jensen
shot.
Allegations of corruption
against Rosenes were made in 1998.
On
July 7, 1998, a Herald Sun report read as follows:
A man who
blamed his daughter's de facto husband for her suicide asked a police officer to
find him a hit man, a court heard.
Alfred Henry
Hulland, 67, told his brother-in-law, Det-Sgt Malcolm Rosenes, he wanted to
"fix up" Alan White, Frankston Magistrates' Court was told.
Det-Sgt
Rosenes, of the drug squad, said Mr Hulland had been "ranting and
raving" about Mr White at a lunch in November 1995, and asked if he
"had come across a hitman during my time in the police force".
The court
also was told Mr Hulland wanted Mr White to be arrested for drink-driving.
"He
wanted to set him up in relation to getting caught for drink-driving,"
Det-Sgt Rosenes told the court.
"He
wanted me to have him arrested whilst he was leaving a club where he knew he
would be drunk and would drive his vehicle."
Mr Hulland's
daughter, Ms Carolyne Bradley, 33, died when she threw herself under a train on
September 30, 1995.
Mr White's
brother-in-law, Mr Bruce Johnson, said he received a phone call from Mr Hulland
on November 9, 1995, saying he wanted to kill Mr White.
Mr Johnson
said Mr Hulland accused Mr White of taking several items from Ms Bradley's home,
saying "if Alan did not give the items back he would end up like Carolyne".
Mr Johnson
also said Mr Hulland threatened "if Alan was not careful he would not live
to cause problems to anyone else".
Det-Sgt
Rosenes's wife, Gillian, told the court she heard Mr Hulland tell her husband he
blamed Mr White for Ms Bradley's suicide and wanted to get in contact with a
hitman.
"I can
recall him saying `surely you must be able to give me the name of a hitman',"
Mrs Rosenes said.
In a
statement to police, Mrs Rosenes said Mr Hulland was "hell-bent on revenge
for White" and loathed him, the court heard.
However, Mrs
Rosenes said she did not hear Mr Hulland directly link his request for a hitman
with wanting to kill Mr White.
Defence
lawyer Geoff Chettle told the court Det-Sgt Rosenes had been investigated by the
police ethical standards department after complaints made by Mr Hulland.
Mr Chettle
said the complaint was based on allegations by Mr Hulland that Det-Sgt Rosenes
was a "corrupt policeman" and had offered to have Mr White arrested on
drink-driving charges.
On the night of
August 18, 1998, Malcolm Rosenes was part of a series of raids on sophisticated
amphetamines factories.
More than 200 police
searched 32 Melbourne premises and arrested 20 people in the hours before murdered
policeman Gary
Silk's funeral.
Several pistols were
also seized.
Drug Squad head, John
McKoy said the raids, part of Operation Orbost, were the biggest series of
simultaneous raids the squad had ever carried out.
The
following is a transcript of a secretly recorded
conversation between Rosenes and a police informer
in the Botanic Gardens on December 29, 2000.
ROSENES:
I've got to go and deliver this. I've got to go and
pick up sixteen.
INFORMER:
So what, he wants, do you want some more coke?
ROSENES:
Yeah, I've got to pick up, I've got to pick up, I've
got some money in my pocket now. He wanted another
two [grams of cocaine], and I said don't be greedy,
just take another one. He said how about some
fucking of those things [ecstasy tablets]. He can do
500 of those at $20 each.
INFORMER:
Which ones does he want? The blue or the white?
ROSENES:
He said get him a mixture.
On July 29, 2001, Ethical
Standards Department police arrested five men - including Detective Sergeant
Rosenes and seized 55,000 ecstasy tablets, valued at $3 million.
Rosenes was arrested in a Caulfield park
during the evening.
He was suspended without pay and
remanded in custody to a protective jail wing.
A taskforce arrested Rosenes in a sting operation
and later seized green ecstasy tablets at a St Kilda motel.
Police
also seized Australian and US cash, firearms and explosives.
More arrests were
expected.
Anti-corruption police had used one of the drug
squad's own informers to expose the detective.
During a bail application for one
of the accused later in the month, the court heard that Rosenes acted as the
middleman for an ecstasy ring run by members of Melbourne's Jewish community.
Rosenes allegedly said his
supplier had access to $9m worth of ecstasy but the man would not deal drugs on
Fridays, the Jewish Sabbath.
The court heard that Sgt Rosenes was exposed as a
drug dealer when he sold ecstasy to a police informer.
Rosenes had used the man as an
informer on the cases he had worked on with the drug squad.
The court also heard from
Detective Senior Sergeant Neville Taylor that Rosenes sold 2800 ecstasy tablets
to the former police informer who was working as an under cover agent in July
2001.
The covert agent allowed
detectives to trace the main players in the ecstasy ring, the court heard.
Taylor said the Sgt Rosenes was
taped telling the covert agent that associates in the Jewish community were
"sitting on 500,000 ecstasy tablets which could be sold at $18 each. Taylor
said that only 57,800 tablets had been found.
Senior Sergeant Taylor said that
during the transaction of 2800 tablets for $50,000 plus, some cocaine, the
covert agent watched Rosenes meet another of the accused, Yakov
Schnetzer, and
another man, when it was believed the drugs were handed over.
After that meeting, police
obtained phone taps and a tracking device on the other mans car.
Sen Sgt Taylor told the court
that detectives arrested Rosenes on July 29 after he arranged a meeting to sell
a further 15,000 tablets to the covert agent.
Taylor said Rosenes had assisted
police by telephoning Shentzer and telling him the deal was ready.
As Mr. Shentzer was arrested,
police swooped on Joseph Gutnik's Kimberley Gardens Hotel where the alleged
supplier was staying.
At the hotel, police arrested
Shemuel Ohaion and Israeli national, Claude
Vanounou.
The arrests
came after anti-corruption police used one of the drug squad's own informers to
allegedly expose the detective.
Sen-Sgt Taylor said a bag in Mr
Vanounou's possession contained 15,000 ecstasy tablets and a further 40,000
tablets were found secreted in the lining of another bag in his hotel room.
 Rosenes was
arrested the day before former drug squad detective Stephen
Paton (left) was arrested on drug charges mostly unrelated to Rosenes'.
One charge, however,
was that
Paton and Rosenes allegedly duped a Mitcham chemical company into selling them illicit
chemicals.
Mr Rosenes and three other men appeared in
Melbourne Magistrates' Court charged with multiple drug offences, including
trafficking.
Mr Rosenes' lawyer, Tony Hargreaves, asked a
magistrate to make an order that his client be transferred immediately into a
protective unit of the Metropolitan Assessment Prison.
In agreeing to the
request, Magistrate Steven Raleigh said there would be a great risk of harm if
he remained in the custody centre.
Mr Rosenes faced two
counts of trafficking a commercial quantity of ecstasy, conspiring to traffic
ecstasy and trafficking amphetamines.
The charges were connected
to the sale of drugs fraudulently obtained from a chemical company which sells
chemicals to the drug squad for underground operations.
On the day of Rosenes'
arrest, former drug squad detective and now security agent and courier, Russell
Bassett was kidnapped and his 175kg load of pseudoephedrine was stolen.
He
was ambushed whilst transporting the drugs from Melbourne Airport to the Sigma
Pharmaceutical company in Croydon.
The men were remanded to
appear again in the same court on December 3.
(The following day Spanish police seized
252,000 ecstasy tablets using information supplied by the Australian Federal
Police. Those arrested include the worlds biggest ecstasy trafficker and 11
Israelis whose role was to send the drugs around the world including to
Melbourne.)
Police revealed there had been
a seven-month investigation into the squad.
The
investigation centred on allegations that detectives:
-Sold banned chemicals to drug manufacturers for
amphetamine production.
-Bought cocaine from a syndicate.
-Sold ecstasy and amphetamines to a
Melbourne-based crime group.
-Set up their own private company to launder drug
profits.
The taskforce was set up after an internal audit
into the legitimate purchase of chemicals by the drug squad for undercover
operations.
The audit allegedly found a large number of
unauthorised purchases by a small group of detectives last year. Internal
investigators believe the chemicals were resold to amphetamine manufacturers.
It is believed that the chemicals could be
distilled into five kilograms of pure amphetamine.
One member of the drug squad under investigation
went on sick leave in early June.
Another resigned abruptly just before Christmas
although he had not secured a job.
Assistant Commissioner (Crime) George Davis said
police would discuss with the Ombudsman whether a review of the drug squad was
needed.
"The enormous amount of money available to
high-level drug traffickers and the potential that has to corrupt is a
significant problem," he said.
Mr Davis said he had confidence in the squad.
"Detectives from the drug squad have been selected because of their high
integrity and they continue to demonstrate strong ethical character."
On August 17, 2001, Yaakov Shentzer applied to
the Melbourne magistrates court for bail.
During his hearing, the court heard more
accusations against Detective Rosenes.
On August 30, 2001, Rosenes successfully
applied for bail.
He had spent 23 hours a day confined to a cell in the high
security wing of Port Phillip prison for his own protection.
Whilst in custody, Rosenes apparently became
aware that others prisoners had gained information about his family and the
address of their home, through a jail computer.
One of those said to be
threatening the life of Rosenes was Bandido's Motorcycle Club National-Secretary
Robert Kim Sloan.
He had been recently jailed on drugs charges which involved
Stephen
Paton.
Sloan had apparently informed Rosenes that he was going to kill him
and that he didn't care when or where he did it.
Sloan was freed from jail on
August 31, the day after Rosenes!
Overjoyed at being re-united with his family,
Sloan said that claims were "incredulous" and "pathetic."
"Rosenes had nothing to do
with my case",
Sloan said, "It's an absolute lie."
On September
26, 2001, as drug trafficking charges were heard against former high profile
lawyer Andrew Andrew Fraser,
and his associate Werner Paul Roberts, evidence
was given about the two men's involvement with allegedly corrupt drug squad
detectives, one of which was Rosenes.
The court heard that the
detectives organised a sham because one of them wanted to get up a high-profile
Melbourne solicitor "at all costs."
Malcolm Rosenes said he would fix
up Werner Roberts if he did not cooperate with a scheme to implicate Fraser, the
court was told. Fraser was allegedly the prime target of a drug squad operation.
Roberts' barrister, George
Traczyk, told the jury his client would give evidence that Mr Rosenes accosted
him as he was leaving Mr Fraser's Lonsdale Street chambers.
Mr Traczyk said Rosenes searched
Mr Roberts, found a small amount of cocaine on him and said "I could bust
you, but I'm after Fraser."
Mr Traczyk said Rosenes told Mr
Roberts he wanted to help him to help and if he did not, he would fix him up
with a large amount of cocaine and he would spend a long time in jail.
In his opening, Mr Traczyk said
the importation was a sham organised by Mr Rosenes to implicate Mr Fraser, who
he was desperate to get at all costs. He said Rosenes told Mr Roberts he was to
go overseas on the pretext he was going to get cocaine and could :"leave
the rest to us."
Mr Traczyk said that Mr Roberts
and his ex-girlfriend arrived at Sydney airport on September 10, hired a car and
drove towards Melbourne.
The pair chose to stay at a motel
in Liverpool and in the early hours somebody arrived at the door with the wall
plaques.
Traczyk said that the person was Stephen
Paton.
Paton then allegedly instructed
Mr Roberts to deliver the plaques to Mr Fraser.
The prosecution did not indicate
that the two policemen, on bail awaiting their respective hearings, would be
called as witnesses.
On October 9, 2001, Stephen
Paton's legal representative told the County Court hearing for Werner
Roberts and Andrew
Fraser that the claim he and Malcolm Rosenes had planted 5.5kg of cocaine
was a blatant lie.
"I take offence at it," Rosenes told the court.
It was later
revealed that
Paton and Rosenes gave their evidence to a jury who were unaware the pair were on bail
after having each been charged with unrelated drug offences.
In evidence before
the trial started, Bill Stuart for Ubanec, said police ethical standards
department summaries against Paton
and Rosenes proved they were guilty of high level corruption.
However Judge Hart
refused to allow the pair to be questioned about the charges they faced after
they both indicated in the absence of the jury they would not answer questions
on the grounds they might incriminate themselves.
On
April 29, 2002 it was revealed in the Age that several cases involving Malcolm
Rosenes and Stephen
Paton would be reviewed.
A special
police taskforce re-opened up to 12 drug squad cases after allegations that
evidence has been fabricated and that some convictions could be unlawful.
Cases
being checked include long-running prosecutions against suspects accused of
trafficking large quantities of amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy and hashish.
The
re-investigation includes some investigations where suspects have been found
guilty in jury trials.
The
re-examinations follow the arrest of a serving detective, Malcolm Rosenes, and a
former drug squad detective, Stephen
Paton, for drug trafficking.
All cases
involving the two men are now being re-examined by the Ethical Standards Dept.
task force to check if evidence they gathered was legitimate and can be
corroborated.
All pending cases where
the two detectives were key witnesses are being checked by a taskforce,
codenamed Ceja.
On May 7, 2002, Malcolm
Rosenes was ordered to stand trial.
In the Melbourne Magistrates
court, Rosenes waived his right to a preliminary hearing of the drug trafficking
charges and
reserved his plea on all counts.
Rosenes reserved his plea on five
charges, including trafficking a commercial quantity of ecstasy and conspiring
to traffic a commercial quantity of ecstasy, and trafficking amphetamines. It
is alleged a drug squad informer sparked the investigation which led to raids in
July the previous year.
The two other men allegedly
involved, Shemuel Ohaion and Israeli national Claude Vanounou, were also ordered
to stand trial by magistrate Clive Alsop.
Vanounou pleaded guilty to one
charge of trafficking a commercial quantity of ecstasy but reserved his plea on
separate counts of trafficking and possessing commercial amounts of ecstasy.
Ohaion has also reserved his plea
on the same charges as well as extra charges of possessing and cultivating
cannabis.
Magistrate Clive Alsop heard Mr
Vanounou, who is in custody, was a devout Orthodox Jew, but Melbourne Custody
Centre staff had confiscated his skull cap and prayer shawl and denied him
kosher food. Mr Vanounou and Mr Ohaion did not apply for bail.
All three men face a case
conference in the County Court on August 30.
On June 26, 2002, the Herald
Sun reported that corruption claims against the former Victoria Police drug
squad may lead to the release Tony Tony Mokbel.
Defence barristers were expected
to use the charging of two former drug squad detectives -- and corruption
allegations against three others -- as grounds for their clients to be bailed or
have charges against them dropped.
They will argue the cases against
their clients are tainted because the accused drug squad detectives were
involved in compiling evidence against them.
Former Victoria Police drug squad
detectives Malcolm Rosenes and Stephen
Paton were controlling the police informer who secretly taped Mokbel
during alleged drug deals.
Every case Rosenes and
Paton worked on was being re-examined by an ESD taskforce, including those yet to come
before the courts and those that resulted in guilty verdicts.
It was believed more than a dozen
cases involving Rosenes and
Paton were being re-examined.
ESD investigators were also
probing corruption allegations made by alleged drug dealer David Steven
McCulloch against three other former drug squad detectives.
Det-Insp Paul De Santo, of ESD's
corruption investigation division, said in court in March 2002, that one of the
accused officers, a detective-sergeant who McCulloch alleges fabricated
evidence, had requested an immediate investigation because of possible impact on
the Mokbel case.
McCulloch, 52, was freed on bail
in May 2002 pending the outcome of the ESD investigation.
As discussed previously, Bandidos
bikie gang secretary Robert Kim Sloan had his drug convictions quashed by the
Office of Public Prosecutions in April 2002 as a result of the ESD probe.
On June 25, 2002, prosecutor
Bill Morgan-Payler, QC, applied for the Mokbel
case to be adjourned.
He told Melbourne Magistrates'
Court the Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Coghlan, QC, had reached a
decision the previous Friday that it was inappropriate to proceed with the Mokbel
case while other police investigations that may affect it were continuing.
Mokbel's
committal was due to start on July 15.
His counsel, Nicola Gobbo, said
she would be opposing the adjournment application and seeking bail for Mokbel.
Magistrate Phillip Goldberg said
he would hear the adjournment and bail applications on Thursday June 27.
Police Association secretary Paul
Mullett said those charged with offences serious enough for them to be in
custody should not be given special treatment as a result of the ESD
investigation.
"They should be treated as
separate issues," he said.
"It would be in the
community's interest to not have these people on bail with the prospect of them
offending again.
"Or, even worse, that they
could flee justice and we could be in a position where our members are
ultimately having to put more resources into locating them, possibly even
overseas."
On January 4, 2003, legendary
crime reporter, John Silvester, filed a story in the Age under the heading - ''
Police accused of planting gun in 1988 shooting''.
Silvester wrote that the Ombudsman
was reinvestigating the
1988 police shooting of Graeme Jensen after new claims by
a suspended detective that crucial evidence was planted at the scene.
A policeman facing serious drug
charges, Detective Sergeant Malcolm Rosenes, claimed the gun was planted by police.
It was believed Detective Sergeant Rosenes
had made a statement over the Jensen shooting to the Ceja taskforce - a police
Ethical Standards Department team investigating allegations of drug squad
corruption.
But Chief Commissioner Christine
Nixon handed the new claims on Jensen's death to the Ombudsman, Barry
Perry.
When asked by The Age if he was
reviewing the case Dr Perry
said: "I couldn't comment."
Ms Nixon
also refused to comment on the investigation.
On January
30, 2003,
Rosenes appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on 24 charges,
including 21-drug related offences.
He reserved his plea on all the
charges, which included allegations of trafficking commercial quantities of
cannabis and methamphetamine, possessing cocaine and ecstasy and trafficking
cocaine.
The separate offences allegedly
occurred between September 2000 and March 2001 in several suburbs, including
Brunswick, Heidelberg, Parkville, South Melbourne, Templestowe and South Yarra.
He reserved his plea on those
charges and was released on bail to appear in the County Court in
April.
On February 27, 2003
Claude Vanounou and Shemeul Ohaion, who admitted helping supply Malcolm Rosenes
with ecstasy, were jailed for at least 4 1/2 years.
Vanounou and Ohaion were linked to a
Holland-based Israeli crime syndicate that had identified Australia as a target,
the County Court heard.
The court heard the arrests followed a police
informer's co-operation with detectives who were investigating apparent
corruption in the drug squad involving Rosenes.
Mr Rosenes allegedly claimed on July 2 to be able
to supply the informer with 100,000 tablets at $18 each and gave him six tablets
as samples.
The informer bought 2781 tablets from Rosenes for
$40,000 over the next few days and on July 26 told him he could be interested in
more, the court was told.
The court heard Mr Rosenes obtained the tablets
from a man whose contact was Ohaion, who was getting them from Vanounou.
Vanounou, an Israeli, and Ohaion, of Caulfield
North, were arrested three days later as they drove from the Kimberley Gardens
Hotel in St Kilda.
A search of Vanounou's bag found 12,500 tablets.
A further 40,000 tablets and $10,000 were discovered in his hotel room.
Rosenes was to face court at a later date.
Judge Frank Dyett told Vanounou he was
involved at a low level and had succumbed to the temptation of easy money to
discharge debts and marry his fiancée.
The court heard he had been assaulted in jail for
a newly found strict adherence to the Jewish faith.
"Drug trafficking is as much anathema to the
tenets of your faith as it is to those of any civilised society," Judge
Dyett said.
Judge Dyett said Vanounou resorted to
mind-altering drugs, cannabis and LSD, after finishing compulsory army service.
In 1998, in Japan, an LSD-affected Vanounou
jumped from a third-storey window and landed on a car.
He was in hospital for several days with a skull
fracture and damaged vertebrae.
Vanounou, who pleaded guilty to trafficking a
commercial quantity of ecstasy, was jailed for eight years with a minimum of
five years, fined $18,000 and ordered to forfeit $10,000 and two mobile phones.
Judge Dyett said Ohaion, a father of four
children aged nine months to 14 years, played a lesser role in the trafficking.
But he said Ohaion's explanation to police that
he was to be paid $2000 to $3000 "bordered on the fanciful".
Ohaion, who pleaded guilty to trafficking a
commercial quantity of ecstasy and cultivating cannabis, was sentenced to 7 1/2
years' jail, with a 4 1/2 year minimum.
On April 23, 2003, a court heard Rosenes was set to plead guilty to trafficking in a commercial
quantity of ecstasy.
Rosenes' barrister, Stephen Shirrefs,
SC, told a preliminary hearing at the County Court that his client would plead
guilty to one count of trafficking.
On October 2, 2003,
Rosenes admitted dealing drugs.
Rosenes used a police informer to buy 10kg of
hashish from the father of slain gangster Jason
Moran and two ecstasy tablets linked to accused crime boss Tony
Mokbel, the County Court heard.
The court was told Rosenes was on sick leave when
arrested after receiving $50,000 to buy more than 15,000 ecstasy tablets from an
Israeli crime syndicate.
Rosenes pleaded guilty to trafficking in a
commercial quantity of ecstasy, two counts of conspiring to traffic in cocaine
and one count each of trafficking in cocaine, cannabis resin and ecstasy and
possessing ecstasy.
Prosecutor Damien Maguire said that in November
2000, Rosenes became the controller of an informer involved in important drug
squad inquiries.
The informer became concerned after Rosenes began
meeting him alone and unofficially and so secretly taped their dealings.
He later gave the tapes to police.
Mr Maguire said that in late 2000 Lewis Moran
offered to sell hashish to the informer, who told the drug squad and legally
bought 10kg for $25,000.
Rosenes gave an associate, also a police
informer, a sample and ordered 10kg from the informer.
After being told there would be no surveillance
of Mr Moran's home the next day, the informer got 10kg on credit for Rosenes,
who later paid for it.
After his arrest, Rosenes told police the drug
was poor and his associate couldn't sell it.
Rosenes also ordered cocaine and received 28
grams, believed to have come from Mr Moran.
Mr Maguire said that on December 27, 2000, the
informer spoke to Mr Mokbel about the availability of ecstasy and later gave
Rosenes two tablets.
On New Year's Eve, Rosenes called the informer
wanting cocaine and ecstasy and later was given six tablets.
In June, the informer offered Ethical Standards
Department police information about Rosenes.
On July 2, Rosenes claimed his associate knew
someone who could supply 100,000 tablets at $18 each.
On July 13 the informer gave Rosenes $18,000 for
1000 tablets.
Rosenes gave them to him in shopping bags at the
Pines shopping centre the next day.
On July 15, the informer gave Rosenes $32,000;
Rosenes supplied 15,287 tablets that month.
Mr Maguire said that, strangely, the informer
lent Rosenes money and that seemed to be a reason for their dealings.
"There is no direct evidence Mr Rosenes
received money," he said.
Defence lawyer Stephen Shirrefs, SC, said Rosenes
was on sick leave after his mental health deteriorated at the drug squad.
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