video transcript

(ROUGH CUT ONLY - NO REPORTER NARRATION) Police and customs officers in Sydney have seized nearly 600kg of methamphetamine, the largest Australian haul on record they said on Thursday (February 28). The operation followed a phone call from a member of the public reporting suspicious activity at a storage facility in the suburb of West Ryde. The four month long investigation that followed led to the record seizure of 585 kilograms of the drug, worth more than $430 million ($440 million) police said. "There's over half a ton of hideous drugs that were taken off the streets with a street value approaching half a billion dollars - hundreds of millions of dollars. There are three people that have been arrested and will be prosecuted. There are more that will likely be arrested. There are people overseas that are subject of investigations that will continue. There was police agencies that were working together to make this happen but none of it would have happened if it wasn't for one phone call from the community. That one phone call was the one thread that allowed us to pull and unravel a syndicate that will be stopped forever," NSW police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said. Those arrested are a 32-year-old man from Singapore, a 51-year-old man from Hong Kong and a 21-year-old Australian man police said. Officers said this seizure nearly doubles the previous record haul of 300 kilograms in July last year.