David McMillan (smuggler)

File:David McMillan Dnmark 2005.jpg

Smuggler David McMillan seen at Copenhagen 2005

David McMillan (born 1956) is a British-Australian smuggler. He is the son of John McMillan CBE who was the controller of Associated-Rediffusion Television. McMillan’s observations have been noted by journalists following his career and in his own writings.

Early life

McMillan was born in St Marylebone London in 1956. He attended Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne, Victoria after emigrating to Australia with his family. As a child, the 12-year-old McMillan appeared nightly on the Nine Network’s ‘Peters Junior News’ presenting news stories for children in the regular 5-minute TV bulletin. After working as a cinema projectionist and camera operator in Sydney, he began a short-lived career in advertising with Masius Wynne Williams in Melbourne.

History

A part-time job at a city cinema introduced McMillan to the fringes of the underworld; a group of safe-crackers who had turned to narcotics when police surveillance curtailed their traditional profession. Connections with the free-marijuana hippie lobbyists brought those two worlds together, and an opportunity for someone well-travelled. McMillan then began a career as a narcotics smuggler during which he developed the bag-duplication system at Sydney's Kingsford-Smith airport in the late '70s when smuggling hashish from India.

In 1979, McMillan fell out with disgraced peer, Lord Tony Moynihan, after the exiled lord attempted to trap McMillan in a gambling-sting operation using the large-scale bets of the Chinese-run cockfights in Manila. Moynihan has hoped to employ McMillan’s technical expertise to detonate an explosive capsule in the necks of fighting cocks, and so determine the winners. In fact, Moynihan planned only to swindle McMillan of the betting stake after a test game. McMillan was alerted to the scam by his Chinese film-making friends and left the Philippines after cautioning Moynihan. Lord Tony would later move on to hoodwink smuggler Howard Marks in the ‘80s, resulting in Marks’s conviction and imprisonment in Florida. Imprudent spending attracted the attention of federal police when a Clenet car was imported from California bearing papers that had greatly undervalued the vehicle. This minor flaw led to a major investigation revealing houses, businesses and properties along the eastern coast of Australia bought with cash and valued in millions. These assets later became the subject of Australia’s first important confiscation of drug-earned assets.

After three years he and business partner Michael Sullivan were arrested following Operation Aries, a Victoria Police - Federal Police taskforce operation reported to have cost over $A2million. McMillan stood accused of travelling under thirty false passports and keeping station houses in London, Brussels and Bangkok. The consequent six-month trial produced 116 witnesses and a hung jury that finally returned a verdict after seven days sequestration. The trial was highlighted by charges of an attempt to escape Melbourne’s high-security Pentridge prison by helicopter using former SAS personnel (a scheme engineered by a vengeful Lord Moynihan - see Helicopter prison escapes) , and was blackened by the deaths of McMillan and Sullivan's partners Clelia Vigano and Marie Castello by fire while being held without bail in the first weeks following the arrests. Despite being acquitted of 11 of the 12 counts, McMillan served a long sentenced before being released in 1993 on parole, ( an article in the Australian Financial Review gives his view of day-release after a long sentence)during which he flew to Thailand in what was planed as a three-day exploratory trip. Arrested in Bangkok's Chinatown, he was held in Klong Prem prison before escaping in August 1996 by cutting his cell bars and scaling four inner walls during the night before mounting the outer wall using a bamboo-pole ladder. An account of the Thai prison and his jail break can be found in the autobiography: (ESCAPE, Monsoon Books, 2007) After fleeing Thailand on false documents, McMillan was kept safe in Balouchistan under the protection of Mir Noor Jehan Magsi of the Magsi clan from where he began operations to Scandinavia.

Some years later, McMillan was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan as a result of the confession of a captured courier and flown to Karachi where he was held in Karachi Central Jail. The prison maintained a class system for prisoners through which McMillan kept servants and private rooms. Due to a financial dispute with the prison superintendent concerning his illegal cellphone, McMillan was transferred at night to Hyderabad jail where he was kept in the dungeons until being rescued by Lord Magsi. Not wishing to add the existing Interpol warrants, McMillan returned to Karachi to stand trial where he was acquitted by a Customs Court judge who found there was no evidence that McMillan had sponsored the courier. The courier, a former boxer from Liverpool, was sentenced to five years, eventually released and has since disappeared. During his time in Hyderabad, McMillan formed a friendship with the Moscow street gang whose remaining members were completing a ten-year sentence for the hijack of a commercial liner outside their Russian prison. The gang had been separated by the Russian prison authorities, a decision overcome by gang leader Andreas who flew his hijacked aircraft to Krasnoyarsk from where he freed the other members of his team before flying to Pakistan, then under the control of General Zia al Huq, known for his independence from both the Soviet Union and the US. The story of the Russian prisoners and their ordeal has been written of by McMillan in White Russians. David McMillan returned to London in 1999 however was arrested the following year in Copenhagen and later at Heathrow, although for relatively minor offences.

References

• Drug dealer who escaped Bangkok jail is on the run in London Evening Standard article Sept 2007
• The one who got away Heroin pusher David McMillan infamously escaped the 'Bangkok Hilton' - but he lived like a prince on the inside The Nation, Bangkok
• Escape from Klong Prem Richard Barrow, ThaiPrisonLife.com