Desert Road homicide: Man admits being an accessory to the alleged murder of Ricky Wang

A man has pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the alleged murder of a missing man whose body is believed to have been found in a shallow grave near the Desert Rd.

The 37-year-old accused appeared in the High Court at Auckland and pleaded guilty to the charge of being an accessary to murder after the fact over the disappearance and death of Bao Chang Wang, also known as Ricky.

He was granted interim suppression by Justice Sally Fitzgerald, who also suppressed the allegations contained in the police's summary of facts and the submissions made in support of suppression order.

The man, represented by Scott McColgan, was remanded in custody and will be sentenced in late July.

Last week, the two men accused of murdering Wang, who has been missing since 2017, pleaded not guilty.

The pair, aged 28 and 33 and who have interim name suppression, have been remanded in custody until another hearing next month, while a trial was also set for them in July 2021.

A fourth man, a 29-year-old, has also been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.

He has pleaded not guilty and been remanded in custody. A trial date for him was also scheduled for March next year.

A tip-off in March led police to the grisly discovery of human remains buried on the side of Rangipo Intake Rd, off the Desert Rd near Tongariro.

The body, which police say "had been in place for a period of time", was exhumed and an autopsy confirmed the case was officially a homicide inquiry, code-named Operation Quattro.

Although the remains are yet to be formally identified, police believe they belong to Wang, who has been missing since 2017.

Detective Inspector John Sutton earlier said that a team of detectives was working on Operation Quattro and expected "further arrests". He said police were following a number of leads from information provided by the public.

The four men's arrests came nearly three weeks after police released a photograph of Wang, a Chinese national and permanent Kiwi resident.

Wang's family believed he had travelled overseas in 2017 and he was not reported as missing in New Zealand. Police had been in contact with his family in New Zealand and in China to make sure he did not leave the country under a different identity.

An apartment in Auckland apartment was examined over two weeks in late April. It was the second Auckland property to be searched as part of the investigation.