Former drug baron Victor Spink lists Vaucluse house for $6 million, heads north



Even former drug barons eventually look to downsize from their Sydney mansions, and so it is for Victor Spink, who starred as “Mr C” in the notorious Jockey Tapes scandal of the 1990s.

Now aged 73, Spink bought the harbourside residence in 2003 soon after he was released from six years’ jail for organising one of the Australia’s largest drug importations.

Spink said he listed his Vaucluse home to make a sea change up the North Coast after a tumultuous few months during which both his brother and sister died from cancer.

Di Baker, of Di Baker Prestige Property, is asking more than $6 million for the two-storey home with a swimming pool on dress circle Olola Avenue.

Spink’s notoriety goes back to 1993 when he was arrested after a police sting into horse race fixing revealed he helped organise the importation of 15 tonnes of cannabis worth a then street value of $225 million.

​Following his arrest, authorities seized $1 million from a bank account and 10 of the 11 properties he owned in Byron Bay, St Ives, Woollahra, Darling Point and Potts Point.

In 2008 Spink told the Herald he lost a fortune when authorities confiscated his assets under the proceeds of crime legislation.

“I lost everything when they arrested me,” Spink told the Herald. “Three of the properties in Byron and two at Potts Point were worth $16.5 million.

“There was no money earned out of that crime [the drug importation]. No one made any money out of that, but they [police] came and took just about everything I had.”

At the time Spink had successfully won the right in a Swiss court to reclaim $US500,000 he had deposited under a false name in 1987 because his initial deposit pre-dated his arrest for drug offences and he had committed no crimes in Switzerland.

Having bought his Vaucluse home for an undisclosed amount in 2003, he changed his name on title a decade ago to his alias George Saunders.