Greek Australian Jim Soukoulis was arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at Melbourne Airport after six years chasing the Hells Angels-linked fugitive.
Soukoulis disappeared in 2019 while on bail over an alleged drug importation plot, with him finally arrested by the AFP on Thursday 4 September at Tullamarine, as reported in the Herald Sun.
The Greek Australian had avoided arrest for roughly six years before he was caught in Indonesia a few weeks ago, with him then deported to Australia.
The AFP noted that Soukoulis, who is linked with the Hells Angels (HA), had allegedly been involved in a plot back in 2017 to transport more than 250kgs of methamphetamine from California to Australia via a light aircraft.
The investigators who arrested him on Thursday morning believe the plan was to sell it in Melbourne, though sources did later inform the Herald Sun the plane would likely have crashed into the sea due to excess loading.
Soukoulis and two other men were later charged over it following a joint investigation by the AFP and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, and it was while on bail over the plot that the Greek Australian disappeared in 2019.
At the time he vanished, he was facing charged of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of methamphetamine, dealing with an instrument of crime (money worth $1 million or more) and dealing with an instrument of crime (money worth $50,000 or more).
Additionally, Soukoulis is also facing a 2013 charge of trafficking a marketable quantity of cocaine and methamphetamine.
He is reportedly known to be well-connected in Asia, and was photographed alongside some high-level HA members at a restaurant in Thailand in 2017.
Among those at the restaurant was Canadian national Damion Ryan, who is a member of the gang’s Attica chapter in Greece.
Source: Herald Sun
