NELSON - Customs has seized $90,000 worth of tobacco from a Motueka property that it claims was at the centre of the country's blackmarket tobacco trade.
The department believes that the property's owner has been illegally selling large amounts of tobacco through a network of suppliers for the past five years, said its acting national manager of investigations, Noel Dravitski.
Customs had been investigating the owner for several months and intended laying charges against him when it had secured enough evidence.
Officers had already interviewed the man and seized growing equipment and 130kg of tobacco worth $90,000 from his property.
Mr Dravitski said he believed that the man began illegally selling tobacco in 1995, when the last of the country's legal tobacco growers withdrew from the market.
The tobacco had mostly been sold from car boots or to people who had ordered it. The product had turned up from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
Mr Dravitski said any illegal tobacco sold was probably from stocks left over when the legal market dried up.
Customs became aware of the scheme about 18 months ago after a search of properties in the Motueka area.
This led to a Dovedale man, Kevin Percy Burnett, being convicted in the Nelson District Court in January on charges of illegally manufacturing tobacco and tax evasion. He was sentenced to 400 hours of community service.
Three other people connected with the recent operation had been prosecuted for supplying illegal tobacco.
Mr Dravitski said that while it was not illegal to grow tobacco for personal use, it was unlawful to grow it for "sale, gift or exchange."
Anyone caught illegally manufacturing or supplying tobacco could face a maximum penalty of $10,000, or three times the value of the product seized, whichever was greater.
He said very little tobacco was left in the Motueka region and Customs was more concerned with the increasing volume of cigarettes being smuggled into the country.
The department believed a growing blackmarket in cigarettes was the result of rising tobacco prices.
Cigarette prices are likely to rise about 3 per cent on Friday with the automatic consumer price index-linked increase in excise.
- NZPA
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