Sydney  - The flow of money out of Australia to pay for illicit drugs could exceed 12 billion Australian dollars (10 billion US dollars), the Australian Crime Commission
(ACC) estimated Saturday.

ACC chief executive Alastair Milroy told The Sydney Morning Herald that the figure dwarfs estimates by Austrac, which monitors money laundering, and by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

"Certainly we think that current estimates of the size of (drug) money leaving Australia might be conservative," he said.

The ACC seized drugs worth about 1.6 billion dollars last year compared with 20 million dollars' worth seized in 2004. The earlier estimate for the flow of money out of Australia to pay for illicit drugs in 2004 was 382 million in 2004.

Last month 16 people were arrested and 4.4 tons of ecstasy seized in what police claimed was the world's single largest haul of the party drug.

The drugs were found in a shipping container of tinned tomatoes that arrived in Melbourne from Italy. The tins were found to contain ecstasy pills that police estimated at a street value of 440 million dollars. (dpa)