Murder, drugs, guns: US finally catches up with Australia's new Mr Big
Far from suburban Sydney, the man who became arguably Australia's biggest crime boss is now in the hands of US law-enforcement agencies facing allegations of multipl-e killings, drug-trafficking, bribery, money-laundering, fraud and illegal dealings with Iran.
The UN has even accused him of gun-running and mustering private armies. Paul Calder Le Roux's crime empire, taken apart piece by piece since his arrest in 2012 in the lawless West African country of Liberia, dwarfs the Mr Asia drug syndicate run out of Australia by Terrance John Clark in the 1970s.
Yet despite his vast inter-national operations, Le Roux is so little known in his adopted country that Australian Federal Police don't even have a file on him. 
Twenty years ago, Le Roux settled with his new wife in the Sydney suburb of Belmore, tapping away on a computer at home to develop- an encryption system that would later become the basis of a shield for al-Qa'ida and terrorists sent to Europe to carry out attacks for Islamic State.
In a 15-month investigation, The Weekend Australian has tracked the rise of Le Roux from that two-bedroom flat in Sydney's west to his fall at the hands of US drug-enforcement agents.
For most of his adult life, Le Roux, 43, operated under the radar of Western police services, directing a vast illegal enterprise that fused illicit drug-running in North Korea with busting trade sanctions on Iran and dirty wars in the backblocks of equatorial Africa.
Now he has pleaded guilty to a raft of crimes in the US involving "multiple" murders, trafficking of methamphetamine and cocaine, bribery, fraud and computer hacking. The Zimbabwe-born Le Roux travelled on an Australian passport acquired when he lived in Sydney, married to an Aus-tralian woman who now can't understand how his life went so awry.
The proceeds of his crimes have staggered prosecutors, who are trying to bring Le Roux to book in the US, where he has publicly -admitted to rolling over and becoming an informant for the Drug Enforcem-ent Administration.
A scam to push black-market prescription pills into the US netted Le Roux at least $400 million, prosecutors there have revealed. He is alleged to have made untold millions more from running guns and smuggling blood diamonds from conflict zones.
Methamphetamine he allegedly trafficked from North Korea was 99 per cent pure, astonishing authorities with its potency.
The Weekend Australian understands that Le Roux's cloak-and-dagger dealings with Iran involved the illegal transfer of missile guidance technology for three years from 2009, when Iran was under international embargo for developing a rogue nuclear program.
In 2011, a UN Security Council report also accused him of running a small private army in Somalia, along with breaching arms embargoes on the conflict-riddle-d state.
Information contained in the indictment against Le Roux in a federal district court in New York, unsealed on   March 17 this year, states that he "did export and cause to be exported, re-exported, sold and supplied, directly and indirectly from the United States, goods, technology and services intended specifically for use in the production of and for incorporation into technologies and servic-es to be supplied to Iran and the government of Iran".
That indictment also details seven murders that Le Roux ordered-, participated in or caused. Despite admitting to the killings, he cannot be prosecuted over them in the US because they occurre-d in other countries.
The US is central to the controversial international deal reached last year to ease economic, trade, scientific and military sanctions against Iran in return for cuts in its nuclear capability.
An arms dealer who dealt with Le Roux in Africa told The Weekend Australian he had attended a meeting on the Indian Ocean island- of Mauritius in 2013 in which men claiming to represent the master criminal boasted that their "boss" had developed a missile guidance system and sent it to Iran. The men complained that the Iranians had failed to pay for the contraband shipment, and sought assistance to confirm delivery had been made.
Interviewed in South Africa, the arms dealer said Le Roux had claimed to have developed the system and to have uploaded the computer code onto a secure server for the Iranian government, but the "contact went dead".
The date of the 2013 meeting in Mauritius cited by the arms dealer, after Le Roux was arrested by the DEA, corresponds with a related sting organised by the drug-enforcem-ent agency, The Weekend Australian has confirmed. US prosecutors have since described this as a "weapons-trafficking investigatio-n".
Le Roux had overreached in   May 2012 when he tried to set up a deal in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro to create a vast new network to manufacture methamphetamine and send the drugs to the US. In fact, he was being lured into a trap by the DEA, which was sprung when he landed in Liberia on   September 26, 2012, to bed down the deal.
He subsequently turned supergrass, actively assisting the DEA to track down and arrest his lieutenants and accomplices.
"Le Roux was involved in international narcotics trafficking, illegal- firearms trafficking, the raising of private militias to destab-ilise regimes, bribery of government officials, pornography, illega-l trafficking of prescription pills and murder," Marlon Kirton, the lawyer representing Le Roux's former security boss Joseph Hunter-, recently told a federal judge in New York.
The DEA agent who arrested Le Roux, James Stouch, testified that the "co-operating witness" was involved in drug-trafficking, ordering murders, fraud, money-laundering and "multiple other seriou-s offences".
Hunter is now awaiting sentencing over a plot to kill a DEA agent and an informant, which was actual-ly a sting organised by Le Roux for the US anti-drug agency.
According to evidence to the US federal court, Le Roux told Hunter that another member of the criminal organisation was feeding information to the AFP about a failed cocaine shipment, as well as informing to the DEA.
Typical of Le Roux, this seems to have been a lie: the AFP said it had no knowledge of Le Roux or his alleged crimes until The Weekend Australian approached it.
He continues to be motivated by self-interest. When Le Roux appear-ed in another US federal court on   March 2, this time in Minnesota, to give evidence in proceedings relating to another allege-d accomplice, he was anxious to stress that he did not face capital charges in countries where he is accused of carrying out or orderin-g at least seven murders.
"I haven't been charged with any crimes, except in the United States, and I haven't been made aware I would be extradited or deporte-d after the case is completed," he said.
Before turning to crime, Le Roux had a brilliant career as a computer coder. In Sydney, he was credited with developing a program called E4M - Encryption for the Masses - to secure data on personal computers.
But this evolved into a sinister system known as TrueCrypt, which has been found on the computers of Islamist terrorists, as well as a 17-year-old Melbourne youth accused of plotting a terrorist bombing.
In a statement, the federal police said: "The AFP has not arreste-d Mr Le Roux, and is therefore- unable to provide any details on any reported activity involvin-g him."inquirer specialP15, 20-21