Bay of Plenty fruit picker convicted after helping illegal workers for hefty fee

Sumini Anjarsari was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court on October 26. Photo / NZME

A Bay of Plenty kiwifruit picker has been convicted after she helped six other foreign nationals get to Tauranga so they could take up illegal work for a hefty fee.

Sumini Dwi Anjarsari, 43, was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court on Tuesday, October 26, on six charges of aiding and abetting six people to breach a condition of their visitor's visa for material benefit.

Each charge Anjarsari earlier admitted attracts a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

The charges laid by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment stem from an investigation into the Bay of Plenty kiwifruit industry.

The court heard that Anjarsari is an Indonesian national living and working as a kiwifruit worker on Rangiwaea Island, just off the southern coast of Matakana Island.

She arrived in New Zealand on May 11, 2019, and was initially granted a visitor's visa for three months then subsequently granted a work visa.

Between August 4 and September 29, 2019, Anjarsari organised and paid for bus tickets for the six other Indonesian nationals to travel from Auckland to Tauranga following their separate arrivals at Auckland Airport.

Anjarsari charged each of the six visitors $500 to do so, more than 10 times the bus fare, despite knowing it was illegal for them to work in New Zealand.

On arrival in Tauranga, she then took them to a house in Tauranga owned by an associate employed as a contractor in the kiwifruit industry.

These six visitors were expected to work for the associate and their subsequent employment was in breach of the terms of their visa conditions, the court heard.

Anjarsari's lawyer Hayley Sheridan urged Judge David Cameron to impose community work and $3,000 reparation, as opposed to home detention and reparation.

Sheridan said if her client had to move to Tauranga and start paying rent, it would impact her ability to pay full reparation within three months.

Anjarsari's employer on Rangiwaea Island had a barge and a boat, and he was willing to support her to complete a community work sentence once a week in Tauranga, she said. MBIE's prosecutor said the Ministry was comfortable with that sentencing approach.

Judge Cameron said he was prepared to step back from home detention due to Anjarsari's circumstances and the fact that serving home detention on the island would be "impracticable", particularly monitoring her compliance.

However, the judge said it was still important to impose a meaningful sentence on Anjarsari, which meant she would have to undertake community work in Tauranga.

"I also need to denounce and deter you and others from this type of illegal activity, which significantly undermines New Zealand's immigration laws," he said.

Judge Cameron took into account that Anjarsari had no prior convictions, her guilty pleas, her remorse, and that she had been assessed low risk in terms of further offending.

The judge sentenced Anjarsari to 120 hours of community work and ordered her to pay $3,000 reparation at $250 a week.

An associate of Anjarsari has also been charged in relation to this matter.