We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly, but it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients. Sophie Bambridge grows quality potatoes for McDonald's iconic fries in Norfolk.
I think McDonald's are one of the biggest supporters of British farming. They have a real commitment to British potatoes. The Sustainable Fries Fund is a collaborative investment by McCain and McDonald's to help us understand and try different growing techniques.
for potatoes so that we can understand what we can do to help reduce our impact on the environment but still produce a good quality potato. It helps enable us to try things without having the risk and cost of potentially it going wrong. The support from McCain and McDonald's is really useful to us. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's Plan for Change on the McDonald's website.
I've said this once before, it's not your problem until it's your problem. I think what we've seen in the past is people will see these organised crime groups having conflict within themselves and it's okay, that's okay, it's over there, it doesn't affect me. But when you're having these sorts of shootings occurring where it's close to playgrounds or shopping car parks, and it is close to you, it is then your problem.
So this is it. This is the end of the line. You last heard from my colleague, News Corp Australia's national correspondent, Stephen Drill, back in episode three, when he was in a narco tunnel underneath the US-Mexico border. But right now, he's standing alone on a road full of multi-million dollar properties, where there's one that really stands out.
This house is like, it kind of looks like a spaceship. It's just beautiful. Steven's back home in Australia. I'm in a street in Melbourne. It's the city where I live. You might call this a leafy area. A leafy area is shorthand here in Melbourne for posh. The street is full of very old English trees and I'm standing in the shade of one, which is good for my lack of hair.
Despite the tree cover, it's still hot out. The sun is fierce in the blue sky. Growing up in Australia myself, I can remember just how hot it gets. Blackwall, black gate, the door sit well back. Just the underground garage here would probably be bigger than my entire house. The house has white walls, a home cinema, a gym and big glass windows overlooking its private pool.
Now, I'm just walking up to the front door. I mean, this place looks like it's worth $10 million, which is exactly what it was bought for just last year, by a man police alleged is a member of a money laundering syndicate called Long River. The Long River operation allegedly laundered hundreds of millions of Aussie dollars. And I'm just about to knock on the door of this $10 million house that is alleged to be the proceeds of crime.
Stephen reaches out, presses the button on the intercom. His heart beats faster. No answer. As a journalist doing these jobs, you never know what kind of reaction you'll get on a doorknob like this. What the police are saying is the people living here bought this swanky property with criminal profits.
Nothing. I'll try again. But this time, someone answers. I'm Fiona Hamilton, and from The Times, The Sunday Times, and News Corp Australia, this is the final episode of cocaine ink.
Episode 8, Bringing It Home. So far in this series, I've been to Colombia in Mexico, looking at where the cocaine business starts, in the coca plantations, and how the drug is exported. Fiona went to the Netherlands, where ports like Rotterdam, act as distribution hubs for this global industry.
David was in northwest England, looking at the retail arm of the business, the street level dealers. Then he followed the money trail to Dubai, which led to a maze of different companies, dealing in gold, investment and trading. It felt like we'd lost the trail at that point. What do the world's cocaine bosses actually do with the money they have made from their crimes? Does criminal money end up buying beautiful homes in suburban streets in cities like the one where I live?
Trying to answer that question is how I ended up back home in Australia, standing outside his house, looking at how those allegedly involved in organised crime, take their profits and spend it. Hi, my name's Stephen Drill. I'm a journalist. I just wanted to wondering if the place has been seized by the police or what's happening with it now. I just wanted to touch base, are you the owner of the property?
Okay, so I don't have permission to record. Meaning, you're not going to hear the conversation. I can't see the person I'm speaking to, but it's a woman. I guess she's in her 30s. She sounds wary. I try explaining how the federal police have just rated 12 high street money exchange stores across the country and are saying this house is linked to them.
They're calling it the most significant money laundering investigation in Australia's history. The police allege the company operated a bit like a bank, providing a system for customers to transfer money in and out of the country. Only, according to police, some of the customers were organised criminals. And their money, hundreds of millions, allegedly came from cyber scams.
and what the cops call trafficking illicit goods, which would be the kind of business we've followed around the world in this series. At the front door of the $10 million house, the woman I'm talking to seems to hesitate and a man takes over the conversation. He doesn't say who he is.
When I ask, he says they don't know anything about police raids. They've just moved in, and they're only tenants. He says the owners aren't at home right now, so they can't talk. Puzzled and disappointed. I say thanks and walk back out. But something's nagging at me. So there's someone living in there now. Let's go and see.
What else there is here? I'll just go knock on the neighbours door now. This might seem weird trying to talk to the neighbours. But as a journalist, I've lost track of the number of stories I've got just by knocking on doors. Does anybody else in the neighbourhood know something? Anything? When you're working on a story like this, you never know what tiny bit of information might be the missing piece that helps you solve the puzzle.
and I want to know how this house might be caught up in a long river syndicate. So I try some neighbour's doors. The dog is certainly home there, but it's a little white fluffy dog. Not nothing too scary, which can happen sometimes on doorknocks, but I'll keep moving. Because all I know is what the federal police are saying.
that the long river syndicate provided organised crime, a way to move their money here, without it being traced by the authorities. Money that could have come from allegedly trafficking a list of goods, which could be drugs like cocaine. Now the house immediately next door, she has some string tied around the gate, so it doesn't look like you can come into that one. Hello. And then I just press the doorbell.
See if anyone comes out. Do you understand why I think the effort is worth it? Spending hours in the hot sun, knocking on strangers' doors. I need to take you back a few days. To when I got a call from a source. This call was unusual. The source said something was going to happen. But they wouldn't say what.
They just said to be free on a certain day, so I knew it was going to be big. In the meantime, I waited. I kept looking at the cocaine business, which seems to be on a bull run.
In the almost 30 years I've been in law enforcement and intelligence. I haven't seen the scale of cocaine that we've seen consistently hitting our shores in the last 12 or 24 months before in my career. This is Matt Rippen, Deputy CEO Intelligence at the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, or ACIC. The main reason is because of the profit margin to be made. There are a lot of logistics
and arrangements that need to be made between uplift from the sale of coca leaf in Columbia, for example, to make it all the way to the streets of Sydney or Melbourne, et cetera. So it's a real global enterprise. We're talking in Matt's headquarters. It's a hard place to find. There's no marking on the building. Security is tight. Inside these walls, law enforcement spy on criminals.
They access messages, monitor the movement of people and cocaine. But I want for some to actually been really successful in recent years in seizing some really large consignments of cocaine. You may recall 1.8 tonne of cocaine was actually seized in Peru. 1.8 tons. I do some mental calculations.
As I learned to the port in Cuttohenya, back in episode 3, the value of cocaine changes depending on where it is in the global supply chain. In Peru, where it was seized, that 1.8 tonnes might have been worth around US$5 million, that's almost £4 million or US$7.5 million.
By the time it's trafficked all the way to Australia and sold by the gram on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne, that value rises by a lot. It could be worth more than three-quarters of a billion dollars US, over 600 million pounds or 1.2 billion dollars.
Another way of looking at it is that much cocaine would be enough to supply every user in Australia for six months. That seizure was actually linked to one of the highest little threats to this country. So attached to that syndicate, you had another 1.1 ton of cocaine that came into New South Wales from Panama. When he talks about high-level threats to the country, Matt means it.
Australia's alleged cocaine kingpin, a man called Angelo Pandali, is thought to be working with the Kinahans, the Irish cocaine cowboys who are currently thought to be in the United Arab Emirates. The Kinahans are being investigated around the world, including over links to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah and Iran's intelligence services.
In 2022, the U.S. government offered a $5 million bounty for information leading to the arrests of the gang's leaders. As of today, the Kenhand Transnational Criminal Organization joins the ranks of Italy's Kimura, Mexico's Los Zetas, Japan's Yakuza, and Russia's thieves-in-law. Also, as of today, the result of these sanctions, these individuals are immediately served from the U.S. financial system.
and any assets brought property under U.S. jurisdiction are immediately blocked at this moment. Like Angelo Pandelli, the Kinehans are suspected of hiding out in Dubai where David was in the last episode. Together, these different interlinked criminal groups represent a huge international challenge to any single police force.
In 2023, in February, you had two back-to-back large cocaine importations, 300 kilo importation off the coast of Western Australia, and then you had 3.2 ton seized in New Zealand. That's a lot of money.
In one shipment, that's billions of dollars of street value. It is billions of dollars. And the interesting thing here is that because of the profit margin that can be made from coca leaf all the way through to finish product on the ground, they can afford to lose a particular consignment. It's not a good outcome for them, but they actually factor in losses into their business model, like any good company structure would
In fact, in Rotterdam, where Fiona was in episode four of this series, research suggests authorities sees just over half of all drug shipments. Other law enforcement people I speak to say, the average might be less. Roughly one in four cocaine shipments is picked up. Either way, the cocaine traffickers still make a profit. Although that doesn't stop them lashing out when a shipment is lost.
Good morning, first to breaking news and we are three hours into a gangland manhunt in Sydney. In Sydney, a bloody gang war has caused more than 20 deaths in recent years. Another manhunt is underway tonight after the daylight shooting of a former bikeie. Sparked by a dispute over a missing shipment of cocaine, now thought to have been seized by the Federal Police. A man has been shot dead in a front yard at Fairfield Heights in Sydney's tit-for-tat gangland war.
organized crime groups act like a genuinely global business. But what we're seeing in the environment that's been somewhat different, particularly in the last three to five years, has been collaboration across organized crime groups that traditionally wouldn't work together.
We're seeing cocaine importations where you have Mexicans working with Chinese organised crime, working with outlaw motorcycle gangs in Australia to make sure that they compartmentalise their business appropriately to protect the head of the syndicate, but also to make sure that they capitalise on the capabilities that they all have at various points in the supply chain.
That complicated supply chain where cocaine can travel through several different countries passing between different criminal groups who are now working together, that's a strength of the modern drug operation. The person who's ultimately in charge is not exposed. He or she is like the chief executive, safe inside their boardroom, while different groups from different countries handle all the actual work.
But listening to Matt, I learned that this is also a weakness because the longer the chain becomes, the more weak links it contains, meaning more opportunities for law enforcement to find those links and break them. The day comes when my source had told me something big is going to happen. Before dawn, hundreds of Australian federal police officers launched raids across the country.
they see expensive looking cars and haul them away with tow trucks, carry battering rams up to the gates of expensive looking homes, and send uniform cops into 12 high street money exchange stores in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. The stores are part of a national chain with bright professional signs, shining white counters, smartly dressed staff,
and this promotional video playing in the window.
Nihal, why should Gary Hardgrave? For almost 12 years, I was an elected representative in the Australian government, five years as a minister, including in immigration. As of 2022, I'm joining the board of Changjiang currency exchange to further oversee... Getting a former Australian government minister, like Gary Hardgrave, to promote it, would have seemed a real seal of approval to the Changjiang currency exchange.
Change Yang is Mandarin Chinese. It translates as Long River. The Australian government has strong oversight, but Shenzhen currency exchange has an even higher level of reliability with watertight security processes in place to guarantee the safety of your funds.
There's no suggestion Gary Hardgrave, the former government minister, knew anything about what was allegedly going on at Changeyung. He's not been accused of any wrongdoing and would later say he'd cut all ties with the company and had no day to day involvement in its operations.
But this morning, looking at the scale of the police operation, the cops walking out carrying computers and stacks of paperwork, it became clear this really was as big a deal as my source had promised. This is the most significant and complex AFP-led money laundering investigation in the nation's history.
This is Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner, Stephen Dometo, speaking at a press conference following the raids in October 2023. I'm sitting among the press pack, frantically typing to get down his words. The AFP alleges the changing currency exchange is a front for a morning laundering syndicate that transfers dirty money for large criminal enterprises.
The police alleged Changjang transferred over 10 billion Aussie dollars just over the past three years. That's over 5 billion pounds or nearly 7 billion US dollars. Most of that was legal, the cops say, but they also alleged criminals were allowed to move money in and out of the country by mixing it in with the legal transactions.
In this way, the federal police allege around $229 million was laundered. Money from what police call a serious violent act. Money laundering is not a victimless crime. And also money from trafficking illicit goods. Even after more than 20 years in law enforcement and as a former lawyer myself, the amount of money allegedly laundered still surprised me.
the police call it an industrial scale operation. Seven people were arrested in the raids. Some could face life imprisonment, the cops say, although the accused insist they're innocent. According to the cops, they'd been living the high life. I keep typing, taking it all in, as the press conference continues.
by eating at Australia's most extravagant restaurants, drink wine and sake values in the tens of thousands of dollars, travel on private jets and drive vehicles purchased for almost $400,000. One alleged offender lived in a home worth more than $10 million. That's the $10 million house. The one with the gleaming white walls that looks something like a spaceship where we started this episode.
Hi, how you going? My name's Steve, I'm a journalist. So, now that I know my source is correct, and this is a big deal, I want to know more about this alleged money laundering operation. Hi, my name's Stephen Drill, I'm a journalist. I just wanted to wondering if the place has been seized by the police or what's happening with it now. I just wanted to touch base, are you the owner of the property?
When the people inside said I can't help because there are only tenants and had just moved in, I start talking to the neighbours. Because if the cops are right and this house was bought by people, caught up in an international money laundering operation, then this could be the very last step in the kind of global criminal business we've been following ever since the coke field in Columbia.
where the money made by organised crime gangs is moved into a new country and those involved allegedly spend it on seemingly legitimate purchases like fast cars and fancy houses or like this house. Just wanted to talk about your neighbours. Have new people moved in recently? So I got chatting to a neighbour.
Is there new tenants in the house or same people? But has there been any removal trucks or no removal trucks? That's probably the same people there. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's hard to hear on the audio what the neighbour says, but he's just told me he hasn't sent anybody moving in recently. No removal trucks.
wondering about that, I stand in the shade of a tree, get my phone out and reread news reports of the police raid. I'm just going back through the news articles because I think I may have missed a trick here. I know that there was a husband and wife who were arrested, so I'm just going through now and checking which of the people it might actually be.
Now there were three people who were granted bail, and I'm not going to use their names here in this podcast, but there were three people granted bail, so it's possible that the people who were granted bail, those people we just spoke with, on the intercom. Perhaps weren't tenants, but were actually the people accused of being involved in my ordering syndicate.
According to the police charge sheets, which were tended in court, the couple who bought this house, a part of what the police are calling the Long River Money Laundering Syndicate. That syndicate was named after the chain of shiny money exchange offices that were rated last October. Investigators have traced millions going into the bank accounts of one of the owners of this house.
The police also alleged that some of those who were arrested coached others to create company structures and false documents to conceal the proceeds of crime. The charge sheets use what seems like the language of accountants, talking about different businesses, beneficiaries and assets, funds transfer instructions, taxable declarations. This all feels a long way from where I started this series.
With Jose, the Colombian police officer, who lost his legs to a landmine, fighting a bloody war in the drug plantations. We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.
Mike Allward is a dairy farmer from Cheshire who supplies organic milk to McDonald's in the UK for its teas, coffees and porridge through Arla. We're involved in a network which has been set up by Arla to look at the possibilities for farming regeneratively. One of the things we're doing here is moving our cattle and giving them a fresh piece of grass every day to help regenerate the soil.
We're very lucky that we've had a long-term relationship with McDonald's. And I think often people don't realise how seriously McDonald's take their relationships with farmers. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website.
a war on drugs. I mean, times have changed. We don't focus on commodity. We've matured our approach. Kirsty Scofield is the Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner in charge of the forces' crime command, meaning she oversaw the investigation into alleged money laundering by the Chang'ian currency exchange.
In person, she's all smiles, tan skin. She could be an Aussie surfer, but that hides an inner toughness. As a detective, she worked counter-terrorism and organised crime. We caught up after the Changjiang police raids, but it's an open investigation, so Kirsty wasn't going to talk about it. But from what she would tell me, it's obvious that Kirsty knows the cocaine business,
She's thought about it deeply. Any major cocaine bust that involves Australia or Australian police, based at over 30 officers worldwide, comes across her desk. It's much bigger than a commodity. It is a global business. And we really do look at it as a whole business. We just don't target the drugs. Where this is relevant is the idea of accountants. Kirsty says there are professional criminal groups out there who provide a service to other crime gangs.
helping them process their profits, moving money in and out of countries and taking a cut in the process. We look at the finances. We actually try to disrupt the whole business model. We look at the key enablers of what constitutes their business structures. We make it hostile, onshore and offshore, wherever they're operating.
So, yeah, you're saying you're disrupting the business. I mean, that comes to the next point of, are you necessarily trying to arrest everybody? Is that the most effective way of curbing the drug businesses in the drug trade?
I don't think we can arrest our way out of this at all. So we are really focused on targeting those people that when we take them out, it has a significant impact on their ability to run a business. Who is it that moves their money? We take their money, we take the money and the profit out of the crime. Who is it that they rely on for their logistics? And you'll find there'll be a key person across several organised crime groups that helps with logistics and we'll target that person.
Kirsty's saying this reminds me of a line from an old movie called Wall Street, about a young stockbroker who wants to make his fortune in New York during the 1980s. Money never sleeps, pal. Just made 800,000 Hong Kong golds been wired to you. Money never sleeps. That's Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas.
In the movie, the young broker starts making money. Only it corrupts him. It becomes like the money is in charge. He can never stop. Kirsty says the same is true of those working in the illegal business world. They do not stop. They are 24-7. They conduct multiple business deals at the one time and they are motivated by money, greed and ego and that drives them. It's power. That's led to more conflict.
That's right. It's all over money. They want to control certain parts of the business. So the conflict is generally associated with that. What's happening now is people are getting caught in the crossfire. They no longer do that sort of business away from public attention. They're more comfortable to do it in the public arena.
You know, we've seen dead bodies in Sydney streets where kids are walking past. That's right. So it's coming to people's doorsteps now. Yeah, and I've said this once before, it's not your problem until it's your problem. I think what we've seen in the past is people will see, you know, these organised crime groups having conflict within themselves and it's okay, that's okay, it's over there, it doesn't affect me. But when you're having these sorts of shootings occurring where it's close to playgrounds or shopping car parks,
And it is close to you. It is then your problem. And what would you say to someone who's taking cocaine this weekend in Sydney or London? Because it's happening. I mean, we can't pretend that it's not. Just don't do it. Sometimes I feel that just falls on deadies. I find that one of the complicated factors is how do we explain to those taking drugs of reasons not to do it? Because they feel it's part of their life.
Where do you stop and what do the police just say up? Do we give up? Do we just let this go? Or how do you actually keep trying to fight against the criminal organisations? The option to give up is not there. I mean, what would it look like if we did give up? What does it mean for the world?
There's all these other parts of society doing the right thing. There's just such an inequity in it. And is it hard? Yes, it is. Is it worth it? Definitely. It's not just about arresting somebody. That's old policing mentality. It's very, very different. We look for different ways to do business. We look at all forms of disruption. Make it hostile for them to operate wherever they are in the world. After speaking to Kirsty, the idea stays with me.
The police are looking for different ways to do business. Because the old way of doing business, by simply trying to arrest the people selling the drugs, isn't working. Standing outside that $10 million house, I decide to go back, determined to find out who owns it. I reach out and try the intercom again.
The man answers. Again, I don't have permission to record the conversation. But this time, he and I get talking. It's not easy, talking to you into cop. It keeps cutting off after a few seconds. So one of us has to press the button again to talk. And the man on the other end keeps pressing that button, like he really wants to talk to me. I ask,
Are you sure you're not one of the people involved in the Long River alleged international money laundering operation? This is no, but they are relatives. You can't say where his relatives are, right at this moment. That does say that police raids can't resist shock to them all. The man says his relatives are innocent of what police say about them. They're entrepreneurs, successful business people. He says his international politics involved.
Maybe some racism. Because the people who have been arrested have Chinese heritage. And the charges are not proven. He starts talking about how the police announced having seized a $400,000 Mercedes. But what didn't get said was that his relatives business meant dealing with millionaires and billionaires. And according to him, you can't do that if you're driving around in a Toyota or a Hyundai.
But he said the police only found $17,000 in cash during their raids, which was actually a gift for a baby's first birthday. He doesn't say who the baby is, only that its parents were taken away. I think he means they were arrested, leaving the baby waking up in the night, crying for mommy and daddy.
He goes back to how the police were talking about lavish lifestyles, including a private jet. He says they actually got a deal, like a subscription, where they could fly on private flights that would otherwise be empty. Which, he says, made it cheaper than flying with a commercial company, apparently. The private jet also looked better. He says his relative reputation has been tarnished. Their bank accounts have been frozen.
There are 150 employees who don't know if they have a future. We stand there, talking for what feels like half an hour. The intercom keeps coming out, but he sticks at it, pressing the button on his side to keep going. He keeps coming back to the point that is relative to which is business people, and the police don't understand the business. Eventually, the conversation comes to an end,
I go to turn away, then somehow the door opens. The man I've been talking to from outside the house is standing there, looking surprised, like maybe he pressed the wrong button on the intercom and didn't mean for the front door to open. We're face to face. I reach out and shake his hand. And I believe what he's told me that he's not one of the people allegedly involved in this money laundering operation.
meaning he's just like so many people we've met during this investigation. An innocent who's paid the cost of an alleged criminal business operation that spans entire countries. This man was left holding the baby. He says he'll pass my name and number onto his relatives. They never call. Walking away, I think that was extraordinary. And at the same time, it was very ordinary.
Face to face, we were just two people, standing in the doorway of a house, not far from where I live. After spending months on this investigation, I've ended up back in my home city. Walking to my car, I look up and down the road at all the houses and think about where this journey's brought us. Following the money to where the police allege the trail ends.
with $10 million being spent on a nice house in a wide street, in a leafy suburb, in a pleasant city. It's very ordinary. It could be any house on any street, near where I live, or you do.
So, looking back over this entire series, we have Fiona, David and I got to. While following the money from Colombia to Mexico, the Netherlands, the UK to the UAE and Australia, we found a complex and sophisticated multi-billion dollar operation.
And it's only getting stronger. If Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord, help create the modern cocaine industry. An elite Colombian police unit killed Pablo Escobar in a shootout. Then his death in a shootout in 1993 certainly didn't kill it. Colombian authorities say its message to other drug lords is to surrender or you will be killed.
In fact, production expanded in the years after and is now at record highs. With people living in our two countries, Australia and the UK, the top two highest cocaine users in the world. In Colombia, I saw how government policy of trying to stop the industry by cracking down on cocaine supply just isn't working.
When I lost my legs, I arrived at the clinic. I cried so much. But I... The only people who really lose out are the farmers and the cops into enforce this policy, who don't always come back. And I say to my god, forgive them. In Mexico, I learned its demand that drives the cocaine business.
I'm down here in a narco tunnel. We're about 80 meters from the Mexican border. And to be honest, it's just quite frightening. There's some timber that's there for you. With the drug multiplying in value as it moves through each stage of the supply chain. In the port of Rotterdam, the cocaine industry is now so vast. It uses the same shipping containers as any other global business would to move its product. The industry corrupts everything it touches.
We have a big problem in the port of Rotterdam with cocaine. From port workers to gang leaders, who have no regulators to turn to, so end up building themselves at torture chamber to adjudicate their business disputes.
In Merseyside, the same violence spills out onto the streets where cocaine is bought and sold with rival gangs at war. An innocent people suffer. I'd never go in there because you know what's on the wood church. I met other people preyed on because of their innocence or naivety. I can't believe how much it was. It became cash mules. And I thought, what the fuck have I got myself into?
carrying money over international borders, exploiting differences between countries' regulations in Dubai while undercover. Some of the money might be from like drugs in the UK. I learnt how that money can be traded through goals or through different accounting structures. Actually, he said Alfelasi on there, but it's clearly him. He's clearly him.
And then, at home in Melbourne, I found where police allege some of the profits of a money laundering operation was spent on a house that looks like a spaceship and met Kirstie, the Federal Police Assistant Commissioner, who said, I think we can arrest our way out of this at all.
If that is true, what can we do instead? Maybe it's about looking at the cocaine problem differently, in the way we've approached in this series as a business. It's just a commodity that has to go from A to B. By following the money, law enforcement can find new ways to disrupt the cocaine industry and its kingpins.
We actually try to disrupt the whole business model. We look at the key enablers of what constitutes their business structures. By learning how each link in the supply chain works, you can identify its weaknesses but also its strengths. It's not good enough to tackle it within state borders. Governments and countries need to work together.
We know there's no easy answers. But we also know, from personal experience of covering these crimes and those impacted by them, that governments have spent billions over the decades on the drug war, and they're still not winning.
At the scene where she was killed, Ellie's family came to lay flowers for a woman they so deeply loved.
Those running the cocaine business are as dynamic, ruthless and motivated as any successful capitalist. Able to respond at speed to market pressures in a way that government agencies and lawmakers simply can't. And fundamentally, the demand for what they're selling? Cocaine isn't going anywhere.
So, maybe dealing with cocaine ink on these terms, like a business. Like the business it is, we can find a new approach. This is not a video game. This is real life. You go to a fucking pub or Christmas Eve with a machine gun.
If you're someone going here with a baseball bat and having a grieving through to someone, that standard happens every weekend. But you go somewhere with a machine, as a matter of when it is, you go and it kills someone.
cocaine ink was a joint investigation from The Times, The Sunday Times, and Newscorp Australia. The reporters were David Collins, Stephen Drill, and me, Fiona Hamilton. The series was produced by Sam Chantarasak with additional production by Andrea Ties Evanston. The executive producers were Will Rowe and Dan Box. Audio production and editing was by Jasper Leake, original music by Tom Burchall.
Social and video by Kizzibray, Shobharal, Vanessa Graham and Chelsea Hardeman. Our legal team were Pia Sama, Richard Murray and Stephen Coombs. The compliance editor was Claire Telford. The UK production manager was Oliver Adamson. In Australia, the project was overseen by Lillian Salle. In the UK, it was overseen by Kate Ford, the executive producer of the Times Daily podcast The Story.
The Head of Times podcast is Tim Lavelle, and in Australia, the podcast team was run by Shannon Hollis. But that's not quite the end of the series. We have two more bonus episodes still to come. In the first, David sits down with Steve and me, a former international cocaine smuggler, to talk about his wild ride with the Colombian cartels, and why he left it.
And I'll be sitting down with David and Steven to answer your questions about the series. So don't forget to send an email to cocaineinkathetimes.co.uk or get in touch with us directly. Our social media handles are in the show notes for the series.
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly, but it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients. Sophie Bambridge grows quality potatoes for McDonald's iconic fries in Norfolk.
I think McDonald's are one of the biggest supporters of British farming. They have a real commitment to British potatoes. The Sustainable Fries Fund is a collaborative investment by McCain and McDonald's to help us understand and try different growing techniques.
for potatoes so that we can understand what we can do to help reduce our impact on the environment but still produce a good quality potato. It helps enable us to try things without having the risk and cost of potentially it going wrong. The support from McCain and McDonald's is really useful to us. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's Plan for Change on the McDonald's website.
