CANBERRA, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Australian police said Monday they have smashed a multi-national drug cartel and seized up to 16 million Austrian dollars (10.4 million U.S. dollars) of cocaine and three Mexican nationals being charged.

    Australian Federal Police (AFP) believed the Mexicans were only part of the operation and hope their arrests would lead to the local arm of a sophisticated drug ring.

    "We believe the cocaine originated in South America and has had to transit through the U.S. into Australia, so quite a degree of planning involved in this attempt," AFP Assistant Commissioner Tim Morris said.

    "We suspect there's a local end to this syndicate. Those investigations are continuing, so we're not going to speculate about who or when action might be taken, other than to say we expect substantially more investigations to happen over the next weeks or months and even more arrests," the Australian Associated Press quoted Morris as saying in Melbourne.

    The AFP said the attempted importation was a sophisticated operation masterminded across at least three countries.

    "This is quite a sophisticated concealment, obviously we will be alleging that the three Mexican nationals who arrived in Australia were sent out to help facilitate the importation, so it's involved quite substantial planning," Morris said.

    AFP officers executed search warrants on four properties across Melbourne last Friday, resulting in the three arrests and the seizure of 65 kilograms of cocaine.

    The three Mexicans arrived in Melbourne on Oct. 15, five weeks before the shipment docked in the city's port on Nov. 22.

    All three faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday and were remanded in custody until April 3 next year when they will face the same court.