The son of former NSW Liberal Party leader Kerry Chikarovski endured a childhood marked by dysfunction and the pressure of living in the public eye, turning to using illicit drugs to cope, a court has been told.
Mark Chikarovski held back tears inside a packed Sydney courtroom on Friday as his defence team argued a background of childhood trauma led the 38-year-old to self-medicate on drugs.
Chikarovski is soon to be sentenced after he admitted supplying drugs on the dark web under the username 'AusCokeKing' in exchange for cryptocurrency.
He was sprung wearing gloves and packaging cocaine and MDMA into envelopes ready to post when officers arrested him at an apartment complex in Bondi Junction in Sydney's east on May 18.
Barrister Phillip Boulton SC argued his client had a "complex constellation of issues" many of which were "quite obviously based in trauma".
"It was not a normal family," he told Sydney's Downing Centre.
"He's not the first person whose mum or dad was in the public light who got into trouble and whose life has become more complex as a result of being the son of someone in public prominence.
"But it did affect him."
Mr Boulton described his client as a "fragile person" who did not deserve to be punished "as if he's somebody who is strong and wilful".
"It was childhood dysfunction which marked him," he added.
Chikarovski's mother led the NSW Liberal Party from 1999 to 2002 as the state's first female opposition leader.
Psychiatrist Stephen Woods, who assessed Chikarovski after his arrest in 2023 and again in 2024, described an early life history of childhood trauma, emotional neglect by his parents, an unstable self-image and a sense of abandonment.
"He's had a history of being picked on at school due to the high profile of the Chikarovski name," he told the court.
Police said the 38-year-old received cryptocurrency in exchange for prohibited drugs on thousands of occasions since 2017.
Detectives began an investigation in January probing the supply of prohibited drugs across NSW using dark web marketplaces.
In May last year, officers carried out search warrants at Chikarovski's Bondi Junction apartment as well as a house in Vaucluse where they located large quantities of cocaine, MDMA and methamphetamine as well as $269,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
Mr Boulton described his client's arrest as a "cathartic experience".
"It's involved explaining things he's had bottled up since childhood," he said.
He denied Chikarovski's drug-trafficking operation was sophisticated, instead likening it to the role of a street supplier and no more serious than selling drugs out the back of their car.
"This is one man in his own apartment on his own computer who has figured out that you can use this website to sell drugs," he told the court.
"He has not thought up the software, he has not done anything particularly sophisticated."
Judge Jane Culver said she was uncomfortable with the comparison.
"It surely is not to be equated to someone sitting in the back of their Honda Civic dealing drugs from a Potts Point street corner," she said.
Chikarovski, who remains in custody, is due to return to court for sentencing on December 5.
