IN COURT: Gary Read pleaded guilty to 74 drug and firearm charges.
Police are fighting to seize $1.71 million in assets from a Tauranga drug mastermind in jail for smuggling millions of dollars worth of precursor drugs from Thailand into New Zealand.
The Police Commissioner has applied to the High Court under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act for a forfeiture order totalling $1,714,889 against Gary John Read, jailed for 11 years on August 9, 2013.
The assets police want to seize include two Tauranga homes, original paintings and antiques and three cars.
But 45-year-old Read, who had pleaded guilty to 74 drug and firearm charges, is challenging the value police have placed on the profit he made from his drug crimes and on who owns the assets being sought.
Read's drug crimes between July 2009 and December 2011 involved him organising and receiving importations of packages of pseudoephedrine to make methamphetamine, which would be distributed and sold with help from other people.
This involved crushing up ephedrine tablets and concealing them in cosmetic containers, mixed and packaged in Thailand and mailed to addresses in Tauranga, Waihi, Hamilton and Auckland.
The 70 packages of imported pseudoephedrine equated to 14.5kg, with a street value of $3.1 million to $8.7 million, depending on how they were sold.
Read was also seen on a traffic camera burying a plastic container in a secluded garden of a Tauranga reserve containing 198g of P, with a street value of $139,000 to $198,000.
Sentencing judge Justice Kit Toogood said it was clear Read was the mastermind behind this large-scale sophisticated importation and distribution enterprise.
Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Hamilton, of the Waikato and Bay of Plenty Asset Recovery Unit, said $1,714, 899 was the amount of "unlawful benefit" the police claim Read derived from the importation of pseudoephedrine.
Mr Hamilton said the assets being sought had an estimated worth of between $589,857.17 and $602, 857.17, including two Tauranga properties in Howell Place and Rocky Cutting Road which were valued at $461,000 in 2012.
Other assets being sought in forfeiture are three motor vehicles, two Harley Davidsons, a caravan, original paintings and antiques, six bank accounts and the proceeds of a vehicle sale.
The property is currently in the possession of the Official Assignee pursuant to a court ordered restraining order.
Mr Hamilton said the estimated value of the assets police were seeking did not add up to $1.71 million but if the seizure order was granted in its entirety, any future assets owned by Read could also be sought.
Court documents obtained by the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend confirm the details of the profit forfeiture order application and the legal challenge by Read, and his former partner.
Read's lawyer Bill Nabney, who filed a notice of opposition in September 2013, said his client had no legal or beneficial interest in the two properties cited, which were owned by GR Trust.
Read was only a discretionary beneficiary of the trust, he said.
Mr Nabney said Read also did not have legal ownership or any beneficial interest in the other assets, including three vehicles owned by Internet Sales Limited.
At the time of his arrest, Read was a director of NZ Party Pills Limited and Internet Sales Limited, companies which specialised in sales of herbal supplements and legal highs.
Both companies have since been struck off the NZ Companies Office register.
Read has also challenged the value of unlawful benefit he derived from his drug offending, arguing the quantity of pseudoephedrine relied upon by police had been reduced at sentencing.
His former partner, Phillipa Wilson, is seeking relief from the forfeiture order application on behalf of a fourth respondent but any further details have been suppressed by Justice Simon Moore.
Justice Moore also suppressed the identities and details of three other parties to the application.
A part heard hearing in the High Court at Hamilton has been adjourned for written submissions and closing arguments to be made in few weeks time, although the next court date has yet to be set.
Mr Hamilton said assets could be seized if it could be proven they were gained directly through the proceeds of crime, or if police could prove an individual had benefited from crime assets worth that amount could be taken even if they were bought through legitimate means.
Forfeiture cases were determined on by the civil level of proof, that is, the "balance of probabilities" rather than the much higher criminal evidential threshold of beyond reasonable doubt, he said.