Stuff NZ reports
From dairy farms in Canterbury, a group of Colombians imported cocaine linked to an infamous cartel – oblivious to the undercover agents who’d infiltrated their operation. Sam Sherwood reports.
In the grimy backstreets of Armenia in western Colombia, a drug dealer reached into his backpack and passed several silver packages to a man sitting beside him in a parked car.
The packages contained 2kg of cocaine, which the man and an associate bought for nearly $5000.
For the dealer it seemed to be a routine drug handover to men with links to a group of Colombians based in New Zealand, where the street price of cocaine is amongst the highest in the world (a single gram can sell for more than $350).
The following day he met the two men again, and handed over a further 4kg, not knowing the pair were actually agents for the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who were buying the cocaine as part of a major investigation into a transnational drug syndicate with members based on dairy farms in rural Canterbury.
