A former director of the Western District Livestock Exchange at Mortlake has been sentenced to 27 years' jail.
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Rohan Peter Arnold, who had recently been a prominent businessman in Canberra, was apprehended during a dramatic gunpoint arrest in a Serbian hotel in January 2018, and extradited to Australia in March 2018 along with two alleged co-conspirators.
About a year before he was extradited, Australian Border Force officers intercepted the massive cocaine haul in Sydney, which was hidden inside hollow prefabricated steel on a container boat.
The drugs had an estimated street value of up to $500 million.
Arnold pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to import a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug in May 2019. Prosecutors abandoned another four charges against him.
Arnold's guilty plea came almost eight months after he made an unsuccessful application for bail in the NSW Supreme Court.
In the NSW District Court on Thursay, Justice Jane Culver sentenced Arnold to a maximum 27 years' jail - backdated to start on January 16, 2018, and end on January 15, 2045.
Arnold will be eligible for parole on July 15, 2037, after 19 years and six months' imprisonment.
He was removed in 2019 as a director of South Eastern Livestock Exchange, which is owned by Yass mayor Rowena Abbey and her husband Brendan Abbey.
Arnold was a partner of the Abbeys in their plans for a Hume Highway service station near Yass, but those shares are now entirely with Mr Abbey.
However, Arnold remains a company shareholder. Mr Abbey has said previously that separating him from the company was "a legal process and it takes time to complete".
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