Businessman David Campbell says he knew something was hidden in a shipping container he had been trying to track down by the time he'd been told it was found, just not drugs.
"Chinese money," he told the court on Wednesday as he defends an accusation that could land him in prison for life.
Campbell is accused of conspiring to import a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug.
He is standing trial alongside Tristan Waters after the pair were dramatically arrested in a Serbian hotel in January 2018 and eventually extradited home.
Authorities had allegedly found close to a tonne of pure cocaine worth more than a billion dollars concealed in steel posts from China inside a shipping container the previous year.
Waters has pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess a commercial quantity of an unlawfully imported border-controlled drug, but not guilty to the import charge.
Campbell said he was chasing an anticipated shipping container, which had not arrived, on behalf of a client.
He did not know a man in New Zealand was an undercover officer when reaching out to say the container had been found and what was inside.
Campbell told the NSW District Court a former business partner and mentor had told him something was concealed in the shipment, describing it as a "Chinese asset".
"He didn't know exactly what," Campbell said under cross-examination by prosecutor Sean Flood on Wednesday.
China's capital flight laws prevent money and assets being moved freely in and out of the country.
Mr Flood said the undercover officer "clearly communicated" he was talking about drugs, though Campbell contended he never specifically said what he claimed to have found inside the container.
"'The people over here aren't into it,'" Mr Flood said, quoting the undercover officer.
Campbell disagreed that made it clear he was talking about cocaine, rather than Chinese currency or gold.
"People in New Zealand are certainly interested in money," Mr Flood said.
Campbell said he was not from New Zealand, but did not know of many places that were not interested in money.
Equally, he did not know many that were not interested in drugs.
"I watch the news," he said.
The photos shown to him by undercover officers could have been a reflection and did not look like the drugs he had seen on the news or in movies, Campbell said.
Campbell argues he was acting under pressure from organised crime networks, referring in a conversation with the undercover officer about "powers that be" at the "top of the tree" who were watching the market to see if their missing product appeared.
Mr Flood said he should have gone to the police.
"I have had a distrust of police since I was a kid," Campbell said, reiterating he watched the news.
"I don't trust police at all."
Mr Flood wanted to know what was so special about the steel, given Campbell had referred to it as such, and if it had anything to do with its ability to conceal drugs.
It was architectural steel, as he had explained in conversations already put to the jury, Campbell said.
The fact it was hollow meant nothing.
"You can buy that from any steel shop in the world."
Campbell will continue his evidence on Thursday.
