CRAIG Lembke has been found guilty of importing 700 kilograms of cocaine on board a catamaran that he sailed from Tahiti to Toronto in 2017.
Lembke, 49, had pleaded not guilty to importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, which carries a maximum of life imprisonment, and had faced a six-week trial in Newcastle District Court.
Lembke, a well-known Newcastle sailor and musician, becomes the third person convicted over the drug importation plot, which involved $245 million worth of cocaine, a 13-metre catamaran, the journey of a lifetime from Tahiti to Toronto and an international drug importation syndicate that used the code names "Black Prince", "Spider Wizard", "Scarecrow" and "Brisk Eagle".
The case focused on Lembke's state of mind and whether he knew about the drugs on board the boat or, importantly, as the evidence unraveled in this case, whether he "knew or believed that there was a real or significant chance" that there was a substance secreted on the Skarabej.
It also centered on whether or not Lembke was told before accepting the delivery that he would be paid $500,000 to sail the yacht from Tahiti to Toronto.
Drug importation has an extended definition, and the prosecution had said Lembke was guilty because he either knew about the importation plot before he agreed to sail the 13-metre Skarabej from Tahiti to Toronto or because he ferried another syndicate member out to the boat - after it had arrived at Lake Macquarie and after another syndicate member had offered him an additional $500,000 - so the syndicate member could cut holes in the boat and remove the drugs secreted in the hull.
Lembke's defence was that he sailed the boat from Tahiti to Toronto, but did not know about the cocaine on board the Skarabej.
And his defence claimed Lembke was not told by a drug syndicate member that he was to be paid $500,000 until after the boat arrived at Lake Macquarie on November 14, 2017.
Public Defender Peter Krisenthal, for Lembke, had also submitted in his closing address that a comment made during a covertly recorded conversation between Lembke and a drug syndicate member suggested Lembke may have thought the yacht was to be used for an exportation from Lake Macquarie and not an importation.
Lembke did not give evidence during his trial.
But the two drug syndicate members jailed for their respective roles in the importation agreed to become Crown witnesses and gave evidence in exchange for substantial discounts on their sentences.
However, those two men, who cannot be identified, did not exactly help the prosecution case.
Both men had their credibility and reasons for giving evidence attacked, struggled to remember events and conversations from the period of the importation between September and November, 2017, gave evidence that Lembke was purposely not told about the drugs, could not be certain when Lembke was told he would be paid $500,000 and the key witness even acknowledged, under grinding cross-examination from Mr Krisenthal, that Lembke was "duped" into being involved in the importation.
But after deliberating for three days, the jury were left with no doubt that Lembke knew about the drug importation plot at some point, either before or after he sailed the catamaran from Tahiti to Lake Macquarie.
Lembke was typically stoic in the dock when the verdict was delivered on Wednesday, but members of his family burst into tears in the public gallery.
Lembke will be sentenced in December when he will face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The two other syndicate members who gave evidence during his trial were jailed for a maximum of 19 years and 13 years, respectively.
Both received 40 per cent discounts on their sentences due to their guilty pleas and assistance to the authorities.
Lembke will receive no such discounts on his sentence.
Meanwhile, Lembke's co-accused during the trial, Western Australian man Daniel Percy, was found not guilty of importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.
The prosecution case was that Mr Percy flew to Tahiti to meet Lembke and facilitate the transfer of the Skarabej and its illicit cargo into Lembke's care for its delivery to Australia.
