Major victory over 'P'
- Caption: Det Insp Bruce Good and former Manager Investigations - Drugs Simon Williamson.
Two men who smuggled in enough 'P' to provide a hit for every single person in Auckland were sentenced to life imprisonment in December, in a legal first.
Life sentences have never been imposed for 'P', the street name for ‘pure’ methamphetamine, but the judge said the NZ$135 million drugs bust was by far the biggest this country had seen.
Operation Major, a joint Police-Customs investigation, found 96kg of methamphetamine hidden in plastic blocks at the bottom of cans of green paint. Another 154kg of pseudoephidrine was concealed in bags of cement
plaster shipped from China.
Bill Perry, Manager Investigations – Drugs said the joint Police-Customs operations was unprecedented in the number of different stages it involved.
“The method of detection used by Customs in both container seizures was extremely elaborate and it was evident that a trans-national crime drug trafficking organisation, a drug commodity supplier, was at work” he said.
Simon Williamson, the former Manager Investigations – Drugs said, “The seizures were large by world wide standards and signified at the time a significant shift in the dynamics of the New Zealand drug scene”.
Justice Patricia Courtney told the High Court in Auckland that she handed down these sentences due to the immense proportion of drugs involved and the sophistication of the syndicate.
“The distribution into the community of this amount of methamphetamine would inevitably have caused tremendous damage” she said.
Bill Perry, Manager Investigations – Drugs said, “In New Zealand history, only two life sentences have ever been imposed (and upheld under appeal) for drug offending. Today we got two more.
“What is equally gratifying is that these two interceptions alone have resulted in harm to New Zealanders of $56 million being avoided (Drug Harm Index)”
The court found that the men had brought in five previous shipments, three of which contained commercial quantities of methamphetamine, one of pseudoephidrine and one that may have been a dummy run.
Wei Feng Pan, 38, and Ming Chin Chen, 48, were each found to have arranged shipments from seemingly legitimate companies in China and then arrived in New Zealand to receive the consignments at front companies they had set up here. Between them, they transferred more than $500,000 to Chinese bank accounts, believed to be in payment for the drugs. They were both sentenced to life imprisonment.
Li Fan, 31, was found to have been involved in the importing and distribution of drugs from all of the shipments and for unlawful possession of pistols and a restricted weapon (machine gun), which he had armed himself with to sell the drug from a Kohimarama property. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 9 years.
Guo Wei Deng, 46, who supervised Fan and was caught with him uplifting some of the shipment from a car park in St Luke’s, was sentenced to 17 years of which he must serve at least 8.
A fifth accomplice, Kai Lok (Billy) Fung, a theology graduate who had trained to become a Presbyterian minister, pleaded guilty in 2006 to his role in the drug smuggling ring. He was sentenced to a 15-year jail term with a minimum non-parole period of 7 years.
Two other men, Yong Lei Zhang and Kin Kwok Leung, were found not guilty. Zhang has since been deported.
Simon Williamson said that thousands of man hours had gone into the operation.
“Specialist Police and Customs personnel were deployed in Auckland from around New Zealand. These staff saw it through from the outset right up to the successful prosecution of the offenders.
“The result of the operation is a testimony to the professionalism and excellent work undertaken by a myriad of Customs and Police personnel” he said.
The NZ$95 million worth of crystal methamphetamine seized is, to date, New Zealand's biggest drug seizure (in value, not volume).
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