The 32-year-old Malaysian, from Ormond, a suburb in Melbourne, was a key figure in the ring.
He was picked up in a raid codenamed “Operation Trento”, the Saturday Herald Sun reported.
Police had managed to track down the suspect, who has been charged, after initially seizing 34kg of drugs, worth over A$8 million (RM25 million), from a safe house in Docklands, also located in the Australian city, in January.
There was no one staying in the safe house and they believed it was deliberately set up to store the drugs before they were split into smaller amounts for street-level dealers to sell around Melbourne.
Altogether, police have arrested five alleged members of the syndicate, including four other Malaysian men, who had already been charged with drug importation offences.
Malaysia is now the major point of origin for methamphetamine bound for Australia, Australian federal police detective inspector Tony Sinn, who runs the High Volume Drug Crime Team, told the newspaper.
“The heads of this syndicate are offshore and rarely come to Australia,” Sinn said.
“They use an endless cadre of young Malaysian males. They come over as cleanskins … they have no prior police history.”
A cleanskin, according to police, is a term used to describe criminals who have no obvious links to crime groups.
Federal and Victoria police had seized 13.3kg of methamphetamine and 20.8kg of the precursor material MAPA in their raid on the Docklands apartment on Jan 22.
The Australian authorities had said the apartment was leased by the criminal syndicate exclusively to store imported drug consignments flown into the country.
Operation Trento was launched in October last year after the Australian Border Force intercepted a separate shipment of almost 8kg of methamphetamine – worth A$5 million (RM15.6 million) in street deals – in Victoria.
The Saturday Herald Sun also reported that the Malaysian national arrested in Friday’s raid has been charged with trafficking commercial quantities of a controlled drug and importing marketable quantities of a border controlled drug.
He appeared in court the same day but did not apply for bail. The maximum penalty for trafficking commercial quantities of controlled drugs in Australia is life imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Sinn said the ring members seemed to be devoted to the syndicate.
“They are very loyal. They do appear to understand the consequences. They are under the impression the syndicate will look after them,” he said.