Court told of heroin allegation

Press, 22 June 1984, Page 5

Court told of heroin allegation

NZPA-AAP Melbourne

A New Zealander alleged to be the Melbourne link in the “Mr Asia” drug syndicate had amassed assets of $1.6 million from selling heroin, a Criminal Court jury heard yesterday. The Crown prosecutor, Mr Gordon Taylor, said Darryl Leigh Sorby, aged 33, was the Melbourne link of the internatioanl “Mr Asia” syndicate.

Sorby, a property developer now living in Queensland, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of conspiring with others to sell heroin in Melbourne and elsewhere in Australia between April, 1978, and May, 1980.

In an unsworn statement from the dock Sorby said he

went to Australia from New Zealand in April, 1978, with $45,000 from car and property sales, loans and savings. “The Crown says I made millions. Unfortunately that is not true,” Sorby said. “As you have heard I have always got a bit out of gambling — backgammon, cards, horses." Sorby said he had studied backgammon and “there is no point in being modest, I always made money out of it.”

The “consuming passion” in his life had been a real estate development on Bribie Island, the Palm Court estate, Sorby said. “I worked it out, I planned it, I organised the finances, I sub-divided it, I got it rezoned, I sold it. “Had I got a chance to finish it it would have been as good as any development in Surfers’ Paradise.”

Allegations that he had conspired to traffic in heroin were “absolute nonsense,” Sorby said. He denied that he had sold or conspired to sell drugs. The hearing before Mr Justice Anderson continues today.