An Australian pilot killed in a lightplane crash in Brazil with 200kg of SpaceX-branded cocaine onboard had operated businesses that were major stockholders in several mining and energy companies.
Timothy James Clark, 46, was flying over Coruripe, on the coast of the Alagoas region in Brazil’s remote north-east, when his plane crashed into a sugarcane field about 1.30pm on Sunday.
Clark, the sole occupant of the aircraft, died at the scene. Local authorities are investigating whether he had been travelling an international drug route.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal Clark, who was from Lilydale in Melbourne‘s eastern outskirts, was the director and secretary of a number of investment businesses that operated in Australia over the past few decades.
His companies included Stock Assist Group Pty Ltd and Gurney Capital Nominees Pty Ltd (which both remain registered with ASIC), Tjc Nominees Pty Ltd (which was cancelled in July), and Bluenergy Asia Pty Ltd and Tick-Tack-Toe Pty Ltd (deregistered in 2021 and 2018 respectively).
Stock Assist Group owned millions of dollars worth of shares in Western Australian mining company Victory Mines and underwrote millions more in Classic Minerals, according to stockholder reports.
This year, the business offered to pump $5million into Classic Minerals in a share issue as it struggled with revenue and costs.
Back in 2012, Tick-Tack-Toe Pty Ltd also pledged $6million to Marion Energy, an Australian natural gas exploration company predominantly operating in the United States.
The move followed Gurney Capital Nominees two years earlier funnelling $7million into Nex Metal Explorations Ltd, a Western Australian gold mining company.
Clark hails from Melbourne, where he attended a Seventh-day Adventist Church-run school, the now-defunct Lilydale Adventist Academy.
He later went on to study finance at La Trobe University before training as a pilot.
In 2015, he worked for a company operating small planes to King Island, in Tasmania.
Photos posted online show him posing in the cockpit and alongside passengers. Other photos show him enjoying holidays with family, and partying with glamourous women at Melbourne bars.
It is unclear if he was employed as a pilot for a private company or if he owned the plane that crashed.
The plane was registered in the African nation of Zambia – although it had been operating in Brazil for at least the last two years.
The destination of the flight is still unknown, local media outlet Gazeta reports. There were no flight details recorded with authorities.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for comment.
Testing identified the drugs found onboard as cocaine, which had been wrapped in bricks which bore a likeness to the SpaceX branding of Elon Musk’s spacecraft and rocket division. It is known that illicit drug makers often copy well known logos.
Local law enforcement estimated the seizure was worth around nine million Brazilian Real (about AUD$2.5million) to the shipment’s druglords at a local wholesale price.
It remains unclear where the illicit substances were intended to be sold, but 200kg of cocaine, when resold on the street, could reach a value of $80million in Australia.
In Brazil, one gram of cocaine costs $5, about the same as the local price of a packet of cigarettes while the same amount may fetch between $250 and $400 in Australia, which has among the highest prices for the drug in the world.
Very little cocaine is made in Brazil – Colombia tops the production list by making about 70 per cent of the world’s supply – but the former Portugese colony plays a major role in global drug distribution networks.
A 2016 report by the United Nations found that Brazil was the most frequently cited departure point, behind Colombia, for cocaine arriving in African, Asian and European markets.
This is largely due to Brazil being surrounded by the coca plant-producing nations of Columbia, Peru and Bolivia to its north and west. The borders are loosely monitored and sparsely populated.
The nation is also the world’s second-largest consumer of cocaine after the United States.
This is largely because the drug, which is typically expensive and used by those with money to burn in most countries, is accessible across socio-economic groups.
Credits: United Kingdom Nation
