The NZ Herald
Stiff prison sentences have been handed out to South American citizens who, while working on farms in the South Island, formed themselves into a drug-smuggling syndicate that brought millions of dollars of cocaine into New Zealand. Ric Stevens reports on the Colombian connection to rural Canterbury.
Hororata is a village on the Canterbury Plains with a population of about 200, best known for its annual Highland Games festival.
But for a while, together with other Canterbury towns such as Dunsandel and Darfield, it also hosted a syndicate of an international cocaine-smuggling operation tracing back to the feared drug cartels of Colombia.
The group of Colombian farm workers became the biggest supplier of cocaine in New Zealand during the nearly four years they were operating.
Between early 2018 and late 2021, the syndicate imported, or tried to import, more than 100kg of cocaine into New Zealand. The drug had a street value of more than $45 million.
They were successful in bringing in at least 42.5kg, worth $19 million.
Properties in Dunsandel and Darfield were used to receive drug-laden packages sent from overseas. A property at Hororata was used to wash and process the imported cocaine.
The consignments didn’t come directly from South America. They were sent from the United States or England. One consignment was intercepted in Spain. Another shipment came via Hong Kong.
But the syndicate’s family ties, messages found on their phones, and the money trail, pointed back to Colombia — the world’s largest exporter of illicit cocaine and a society racked by decades of drug-fuelled violence and corruption.
Once the cocaine reached New Zealand, the syndicate sold it at the wholesale level and at least one member sometimes retailed it for about $8000 an ounce (28g).
