A former high-ranking Australian Border Force official acted corruptly by leaking classified intelligence about illegal tobacco importations to an associate being targeted by law enforcement, according to a damning report from the nation’s anti-corruption watchdog.
The findings about ex-ABF senior official George Andreopoulos raise concerns once again about the challenge facing Australian agencies combating the booming illicit tobacco market and come a decade after Border Force implemented major reforms meant to purge allegedly corrupt officers suspected of cosying up to members of illegal cigarette syndicates.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) inquiry into Andreopoulos probed the veteran law enforcement official’s role leading a team of investigators at Border Force’s elite and secretive special operations unit between 2017 and his resignation in late 2020.
The inquiry, codenamed Operation Young, is among the most significant NACC investigations to date because of Andreopoulos’ seniority and his sensitive role within the ABF, as well as Border Force’s historical corruption problems and the fact it has been all but overwhelmed in the fight against Australia’s multibillion-dollar illicit tobacco trade.
The alleged corruption probed by the NACC was first exposed by this masthead in April 2024.
The special operations unit was conceived in 2017 as part of an ostensibly cutting-edge strategy to help Border Force deal with the illicit tobacco epidemic.
The unit’s key tasks included cultivating high-level informers in the underworld and freight and logistics sectors and gathering critical intelligence.
But suspicions about Andreopoulos’ corruption ultimately prompted the shutdown of the unit in 2021, leaving the agency without a critical law enforcement tool.
Operation Young was sparked by a separate counter-organised crime investigation in 2020 that had uncovered intelligence that a corrupt law enforcement official called “George” who had a Greek background may be working for Border Force.
Investigators ultimately identified Andreopoulos as the likely suspect, uncovering he had both a personal and commercial relationship with a businessman involved in the tobacco sector.
A subsequent raid of Andreopoulos’ home revealed he had accessed a classified ABF report about tobacco smuggling techniques and sent it to his personal cloud storage.
The report, codenamed the “Rattletrap” file, described how criminal syndicates importing contraband engaged in a practice called “swapsies”.
The NACC’s inquiry uncovered “corroborated testimonial evidence” that about the time the Rattletrap report was uploaded to Andreopoulos’ iCloud account, he discussed “swapsies” with his business associate in the tobacco sector.
In a public report, the NACC described deposing a witness who alleged that Andreopoulos and his associates “approached him about setting up ‘clean’ profiles for entities that could import ‘whatever, plastic chairs or something else, that after a few times could be swapped with something’ – consistent with information contained in the Rattletrap Report.”
Anti-corruption investigators also traced Andreopoulos’ access to two other highly classified reports detailing law enforcement intelligence about the businessman’s tobacco interests, with NACC chief Paul Brereton concluding Andreopoulos “indirectly” leaked these reports to the businessman.
In reaching his conclusions, Brereton described a series of highly suspicious coffee shop meetings and other interactions between Andreopoulos and several of his associates after the then ABF officer had accessed two of the classified reports.
The NACC inquiry reveals the agency repeatedly used its coercive powers to grill these associates in secret hearings, with the testimony of one of the men supporting the “sinister hypothesis” that “Andreopoulos told him that he (Andreopoulos) agreed to ‘look out’ for information” on the Border Force system and leak it.
While Brereton did not uncover evidence that Andreopoulos and two other now-former ABF officials directly assisted “criminal importation activities”, he concluded Andreopoulos had still engaged in “corrupt conduct” because he “engaged in an abuse of office by improperly disclosing to his associate sensitive information obtained through his employment”.
In 2024, Andreopoulos declared his innocence to this masthead and hired a defamation lawyer to threaten to sue this masthead for suggesting he was corrupt. Andreopoulos maintains his innocence.
Brereton said in his report that he intended to refer evidence of his conduct to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to consider a criminal charge.
The NACC also criticised Andreopoulos and his two former colleagues for attempting to start private security and technology businesses, as also revealed in this masthead’s April 2024 investigation.
Commissioner Brereton said that while the trio’s business activities were not corrupt, they had the potential to “intersect with their official roles and were not appropriately disclosed or approved”.
“Overall, the combination of personal relationships, undisclosed business interests and access to sensitive information created a heightened corruption risk,” Brereton found.
In the years prior to Andreopoulos’ arrival at the ABF after transitioning from his previous role as a NSW police officer, the border security agency endured repeated scandals involving corrupt insiders assisting tobacco syndicates.
In 2017, two members of a cell of corrupt ABF officers were arrested as part of the wave of organised crime arrests that swept Sydney and Dubai, netting some of NSW’s alleged crime bosses.
Previous investigations by this masthead have also revealed how small networks of corrupt insiders in Border Force and customs had allegedly compromised Sydney Airport and Port Botany since as early as 2003.
Border Force has previously detailed the introduction of a series of reforms to address these issues.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.