Michael Snounou once rubbed shoulders with Australia’s most affluent people from his lavish Point Piper and Bellevue Hill homes, while running a thriving chemical business. But his repeated choices to direct his legitimate cleaning chemicals into the hands of meth-makers across the country marked the end of his golden years, which now stand in stark contrast to the prison life he has lived in recent times. Michael Snounou and the view from his former Point Piper home.
Credit: SMH The 47-year-old former chemical company director was sentenced last month to a decade in jail for two counts of possessing chemicals intended for the manufacturing of prohibited drugs. Snounou’s double life – in which he transported chemicals bought by his company Cyndan to cooks of the drug “ice” – has been laid bare in documents newly released by the NSW District Court. In 2009, the Sydney University engineering graduate and alumnus of the prestigious Newington College became a director of Cyndan, which made and sold cleaning products that used iodine, a chemical element also used in methamphetamine recipes.
Throughout much of his five-year secret involvement in the drug game, Snounou lived on Wolseley Road in Point Piper, one of the country’s most expensive streets. Michael Snounou is the former executive director of Cyndan Chemicals. Credit: Cyndan website At one point, 15 buckets of iodine bound for a drug warehouse sat in his luxury SUV overnight, mere metres from then-prime minis.