Karmichael Hunt provides explosive evidence in cocaine investigation
by: Jeremy Pierce
June 14, 2015 12:00AM
FORMER AFL player Karmichael Hunt has provided explosive evidence to a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation into football’s *cocaine scandal.
The former Gold Coast Sun was one of the first big names caught in the CCC probe which has so far seen almost a dozen rugby players charged with supplying cocaine.
After pleading guilty to downgraded charges of drug possession in March, Hunt agreed to provide a detailed statement of his involvement in the sordid affair.
That document is one of almost 200 witness statements included in a mountainous brief of evidence handed over to defence lawyers this week.
Hunt is expected to be called as a key witness in the trials of accused cocaine kingpin John Touma and former NRL star Matt Seers, an alleged delivery driver for the drug syndicate.
According to investigation documents, Hunt contacted Touma, a former rugby league player from Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs Roosters, four times between the end of his playing career at the Suns and joining rugby’s Reds last year.
One drug deal took place on the date of the Suns’ Mad Monday celebrations while another was during an end-of-season golf trip with former teammates.
Meanwhile, lawyers for seven past and present Gold Coast Titans NRL players are continuing to sift through the CCC’s evidence brief of more than 225,000 exhibits.
Lawyers Campbell MacCallum and Chris Nyst maintain their clients are not guilty of supplying cocaine and there is nothing to suggest otherwise.
Representing Titans stars Greg Bird, Dave Taylor, Jamie Dowling and Kalifa Faifai Loa, and former players Ashley Harrison and Joe Vickery, Mr MacCallum plans to make a submission to Southport Magistrates Court within days calling for the exhaustive brief to be scrapped and replaced with a more concise synopsis of the case against his clients.
