Mansion buy-up alerts drug team

A sharp-eared undercover agent has given a $100-million heroin investigation an Auckland focus, reports TONY WALL.

A group of Chinese businessmen who paid cash for expensive homes in Auckland are under investigation for suspected links to one of the world's biggest heroin smuggling operations.

The Weekend Herald has learned that the men, who are suspected of using drug money to buy mansions in Remuera, were tailed by an undercover agent who spoke fluent Cantonese and overheard them discussing details of their worldwide operation at Auckland International Airport.

The men are suspected of being involved in a plot to smuggle a huge shipment of heroin through the South Pacific.

Authorities from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Fiji pounced last month after a surveillance operation lasting several months, recovering 357kg of high-quality heroin worth about $100 million from a home in Suva.

It was the fifth-biggest heroin seizure ever.

One of the men arrested during the swoop, Suva restaurant owner Tak Sang Hao, also known as Bill Hao, has links to New Zealand and the men now under investigation in Auckland.

The Herald understands that Hao, owner of the upmarket Ming Palace restaurant in Suva, owns property in Auckland and has run at least one company in the city.

Hao, a Fiji resident of Chinese descent, is being held in Suva prison, along with alleged co-conspirator Wong Ham Hong from Hong Kong.

They face life imprisonment if found guilty of importing the drug.

It is thought the heroin was intended for Sydney during the Olympic Games but got held up in Fiji when martial law was declared after a coup on May 19.

A source close to the police operation told the Herald that alarm bells began ringing when a group of Chinese businessmen paid $1.4 million in cash for homes in Remuera.

An Australian undercover drugs officer who speaks fluent Cantonese began tailing the men, the source said, and achieved a major breakthrough at Auckland Airport.

Sitting by the men in the departure lounge, the officer heard them talking about the heroin operation.

The head of the Auckland drug squad, Detective Senior Sergeant Colin McMurtrie, who flew to Fiji for last month's swoop, said New Zealand police became aware several months ago that a small group of men in Auckland had links to Hao through a number of companies.

He said the names of companies linked to heroin seizures around the world also began cropping up here.

No arrests had been made yet and inquiries were continuing. About seven of his detectives were working on the case fulltime.

Detective Senior Sergeant McMurtrie confirmed that the men under investigation had bought about three expensive homes.

"Any house that's paid for by cash would raise alarm bells - you don't buy a million-dollar property with cash unless you've got something interesting in your background."

Such buying was more likely to be money-laundering than buying somewhere to deal in drugs.

He confirmed that police would be interested in trying to seize the assets if the men were convicted of criminal offending.

Although the operation was based in Fiji, he said, it appeared that the drugs were headed to New Zealand on the way to Australia.

"If they drip-fed, say, a kilo at a time, that would keep the market going in New Zealand for the next 10 to 15 years."