Exclusive: Alleged ‘Mr Big’ behind 500kg drug shipment extradited from Spain to NZ

The man whom New Zealand police allege is the ‘Mr Big’ behind one of the country’s largest drug shipments has been extradited from Spain to face prosecution.

About 500kg of methamphetamine was smuggled into the Bay of Plenty in April 2019 when a vessel from Whakatane travelled nearly 200 km offshore to meet the “mothership” and pick up the drugs.

The plot unravelled a few months later when police discovered two caches of drugs - 193kg in Auckland and 210kg in Hamilton - and realised the individual 1kg parcels were packaged in identical fashion.

Five men were charged with possession of methamphetamine for supply in connection to the two massive stashes.

But detectives from the National Organised Crime Group continued investigating how the drugs were imported, and traced the caches back to the 500kg shipment into Whakatane.

At the time, the importation was the second largest in New Zealand history behind the 501kg of meth smuggled by boat on to Ninety Mile Beach in 2016.

Two other men were eventually charged with importing the massive drug cache but, in a rare move, Operation Essex believed it had gathered enough evidence to prosecute a man living in Europe as the alleged crime boss who orchestrated the plan.

An arrest warrant was issued by the Tauranga District Court in November 2021 and formed the basis of a “red notice” alert to Interpol, the global network of police forces.

His location was unknown, according to court documents.

But just a few months later, the man was arrested by Spanish police in January 2022 at a Sierra Nevada ski resort.

“We were really blown away from the initiative and resources the Spanish police put into tracking [him] down,” said Detective Inspector Paul Newman of the Organised Crime Group at the time.

Newman said the decision to seek extradition was not taken lightly, but going through the complicated legal process in cases such as this would send a signal to alleged organised-crime figures overseas.

“Trans-national crime groups see New Zealand as a lucrative market and are trying to flood our country with drugs ... These types of arrests send a clear message that the world is getting smaller, that global law enforcement agencies are better connected and are working together to track down and hold these [alleged] offenders to account.”

A Spanish court has now ruled the man should be extradited and last week, the police officers running Operation Essex flew to Spain to escort him back to New Zealand.

He arrived on Saturday and was remanded in custody at Auckland Prison at Paremoremo, before appearing by audio-visual link in the Tauranga District Court on Monday.

The 51-year-old was arrested by Spanish police in 2022 and extradited to New Zealand last week to face charges of importing 500kg of methamphetamine. Photo / Guardia Civil

Name suppression was granted until his next court appearance in April.

Previously, the return of an overseas-based defendant alleged to have sent such a large amount of drugs into New Zealand has been rare.

But in recent years, New Zealand has forged closer relationships with law enforcement agencies around the world to combat the cross-border nature of organised crime.

New Zealand is a small drug market, but one of the most lucrative. A kilogram of meth, worth just a few thousand dollars in southeast Asia or Mexico, can command $100,000 to $180,000 here.

These wholesale prices mean the 500kg shipment into Whakatane would be worth at least $50 million.

These profits attracted the attention of global organised-crime groups and led to a radical shift in New Zealand’s criminal landscape.

For many years, a kilogram of meth was considered a significant drug bust, and the record of 95kg discovered during Operation Major in 2006 was seen as an outlier.

But since 2015, New Zealand Police and Customs noticed an upswing in the size of meth shipments, and increasingly cocaine, to the point where 100kg is now almost routine.