It was likened to a script for a movie.
Two years after a successful run, a plane bound for Queensland was loaded with almost 550kg of cocaine at a remote Papua New Guinea air strip in July 2020.
The operation was run by a consortium consisting of a Colombian syndicate and Melbourne mafia identities, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury was told.
The plane carrying more than 400kg of pure cocaine was set to fly to Mareeba in far north Queensland.
However, the plane crashed as it tried to take off in PNG.
Osman El-Houli, 35, has been accused of driving a truck from Melbourne to collect the drugs that never arrived before he was intercepted by police near Mareeba.
El-Houli told officers a man named "The Professor" had organised for him to pick up bags of cash in Queensland and place them in concealments cut into a plasterboard stack discovered in the truck, court was told.
"You will hear effectively a lot of evidence which you may well in fact think could well be the script of some American movie," defence barrister Tony Kimmins told the jury on Monday.
The Crown said it was not in dispute that conspirators "not personally known" to El-Houli had organised for the plane to be loaded with cocaine in PNG and flown to Mareeba, near Cairns, in 2020.
Mr Kimmins said the conspirators thought it was a "really good idea" after successfully flying cocaine in from PNG to Mareeba in 2018.
The Crown said it was also not in dispute that the plane had flown from Mareeba to PNG and was loaded with 548.6kg of cocaine, only to crash 20 minutes later when it tried to take off in July 2020.
The cocaine was taken off the plane and hidden in nearby mangroves before it was found days later by PNG police, the Crown said.
"The substance contained cocaine originating from Colombia with a pure weight of 404.1kg," the jury was told.
The same day the plane crashed, El-Houli was intercepted by police after the truck was found parked near Mareeba.
El-Houli told police he had initially been told he would be paid $10,000 to drive from Melbourne and drop off plasterboard in Queensland, Mr Kimmins said.
However he said en route he was told that they instead wanted him to pick up "bags of cash" and that concealments had been cut in the plasterboard for their transportation.
The crown said there was no evidence that El-Houli knew about the plasterboard concealments prior to leaving Melbourne.
Police found an encrypted mobile phone in the truck, the court heard.
"Ultimately the crown case is that Mr El-Houli was embarking on this journey ... with the intention of collecting a substance that was cocaine and he was at least reckless as to the fact that what he was to collect was going to be a border controlled drug," the crown prosecutor said.
El-Houli has pleaded not guilty to attempting to possess an unlawfully imported border controlled drug.
