Jomal Nchouki pleads guilty to drug trafficking charge after Belconnen Bunnings bust

In the ACT Supreme Court on Thursday morning, Jomal Nchouki pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking in cocaine last April and May.

The Denman Prospect man was scheduled to stand trial for the offence in June, having previously pleaded not guilty.

Agreed facts outlining Nchouki's crime are yet to be tendered to the court, but police previously said they stopped the 27-year-old in the Belconnen Bunnings car park on April 30 last year.

Inside a builder's trailer he was towing with a Nissan Navara, police claimed to have located a green Woolworths shopping bag that had been "scrunched closed". The bag was said to have contained nearly 400 grams of cocaine.

Police seized a total suspected weight of 420 grams of cocaine, having also allegedly found the drug beneath the petrol cap of a Volkswagen Golf that was registered to Nchouki and parked at his home.

When Nchouki successfully applied for bail about a week after his arrest at Bunnings, the ACT Magistrates Court heard the total value of the seized drugs was between $120,000 and $180,000.

Nchouki was compelled by a court order to provide police with the access codes for his phone, and investigators discovered the device contained a number of encrypted communication platforms.

After going through the phone, police alleged Nchouki's messages on Wickr, where he went by the name "whackya", indicated he had organised cash collections and been supplied with drugs.

Following the 27-year-old's guilty plea on Thursday, Justice Michael Elkaim vacated the scheduled two-week trial and listed the matter before a registrar next week.

Nchouki, the brother of former Canberra Nomads president Mohammed Nchouki, will remain on bail ahead of his sentencing at a later date.

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