By Adam Cooper, The Age
An Australian expatriate has pleaded guilty to trying to illegally export components used in the manufacture of ammunition into Papua New Guinea.
Ian Chow will be sentenced on Thursday afternoon in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to the charge of exporting prohibited goods.
In a pre-sentencing hearing on Thursday, the court heard Chow was a high-profile businessman in PNG when he instigated the exportation of gunpowder, cartridge cases, primer and propellant from Australia in 2012 in boxes that were marked as containing household items and ingredients for making biscuits.
Chow is the managing director of Lae Biscuit Company, based in the country’s second-largest city.
The items were detected when PNG authorities inspected a ship that arrived in Lae and looked in the containers, which were wrapped in black plastic.
The court was told Chow was present at the time and did not have a permit for the items. He was arrested by Australian Federal Police last year.
Michelle Sewell, for the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions, told the court Chow paid an associate, Peter Cunningham, $16,200 to source the gunpowder and other items and arrange for them to be exported through another man, Frank Goodwin.
She said Cunningham falsified documents to have the items exported out of Australia and that he and Chow had assured Mr Goodwin there were no concerns over the ship’s contents.
The court heard Cunningham pleaded guilty to exporting prohibited goods in an ACT court last December and was put on a good behaviour bond with conviction and fined $500. No action was taken against Mr Goodwin.
Ms Sewell told magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg that Chow deserved a more severe punishment given his role in organising the plan and instructing Cunningham.
Chow’s lawyer told the court his client had the ammunition components sent to PNG for use by members of the Lae Pistol Club and that his reasons for doing so were for “legitimate, lawful and pro-social purposes”.
The court heard Chow chose to take a “short cut” by shipping the items to PNG without permission from authorities, as the shooting club and police officers in Lae were short of ammunition when Chow’s house burnt down in February last year.
Chow had kept ammunition for the club at his house and that it had been destroyed in the fire, the court heard.
Ms Sewell told the court the AFP accepted there were no criminal motives behind Chow’s attempts to rush the components in undetected. The items would have been lawful with a permit, she said.
Chow faces up to two years in jail and a fine of $13,200.
