‘Motivated by greed’: Influential businessman jailed for smuggling drugs into New Zealand deported to Fiji

Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji was a high-ranking football official in Fiji and successful businessman before his arrest for importing drugs into New Zealand. Photo / Fiji Times

An influential Fijian businessman and sports figure who smuggled drugs into New Zealand has been released from jail and deported home.

Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji, 48, pleaded guilty to importing $5 million of pseudoephedrine - a key ingredient to manufacture meth - and was sentenced in August 2023 to four years in prison.

His jail time was reduced by six months after an appeal, and Umarji appeared in front of the Parole Board for the first time last month.

The Parole Board was concerned that Umarji would, if released and sent back to Fiji, resume exporting drugs back into New Zealand.

“The Board asked Mr Umarji why he had offended in this way and he frankly acknowledged that it was greed. Mr Umarji said he would be paid $10 per packet of the Actifed pills that were removed from the shipment by the person that he used for freight forwarding.”

After a lengthy discussion, the Parole Board was persuaded it was “very unlikely” that Umarji would get back into the drug trade.

This was because Umarji had a strong support who assured the Parole Board that Umarji no longer had any role in the family business involved with importing pharmaceuticals.

The Parole Board also accepted that Umarji was dealing with a co-offender, rather than directly with a criminal syndicate in New Zealand.

“There is no evidence that he had any ties with any of the others involved in the drug trade in New Zealand,” the Parole Board said in a written decision. “For those reasons, the board is satisfied that his risk would not be undue if he were deported back to Fiji.”

Umarji is unable to return to New Zealand until his sentence ends in February 2027.

The criminal case was an enormous fall from grace for the successful businessman and powerful sports administrator.

Umarji was the managing director of several pharmacies in Fiji and across the Pacific region, part of a group called Hyperchem. Through it, Umarji was responsible for the legal importation and exportation of pharmaceuticals into and out of Fiji.

He was also a major figure in sports, serving as a vice-president of the Fiji Football Association and as a committee member for football’s global governing body, Fifa.

An influential figure in Fijian society, there were also rumours about Umarji although local police were unable to make any progress.

While seconded to work in Fiji in 2019, New Zealand detective Peter Reynolds heard whispers about Umarji’s alleged criminal activity from his new colleagues.

On returning to New Zealand, he decided to take things into his own hands. Digging through police files, Reynolds found a lucky break in a case from nearly two years prior.

In late 2017, an anonymous member of the public had reached out to an anti-crime hotline with a tip that a businessman, Firdos “Freddie” Dalal, had a suspicious amount of money in his home in suburban Auckland.

Acting on a search warrant, police made their way inside and found $726,190 in cash and 4000 boxes of Actifed, a cold and flu medicine that contains pseudoephedrine.

Known as Operation Duet, the investigation that led to Dalal’s conviction provided the information that Reynolds needed to go after Umarji. It turned out that Dalal, who owned an Auckland-based freight forwarding company, was also listed as the director of Umarji’s New Zealand company, Bio Pharma.

Using his Pacific-wide Hyperchem network, Umarji ordered Actifed pills to be delivered from abroad to his pharmacies in Fiji and the Solomon Islands. The shipments were set to transit through New Zealand, where Dalal’s forwarding company was responsible for the cargo.

While the drugs sat in a restricted customs holding area, Dalal simply went inside and swapped them out for other medicine, such as anti-fungal cream, which was then sent on to their island destinations. The purloined pseudoephedrine was sold on New Zealand’s black market.

In just three shipments between January and October 2017, Umarji’s operation brought in an estimated 678,000 Actifed pills containing about 40.7kg of pseudoephedrine, Auckland District Court would later find.

Charges were laid against Umarji in December 2019, so New Zealand authorities decided to go through the arduous process of requesting extradition.

In November 2021, a Fijian court agreed to the request, and New Zealand police issued an Interpol red notice.

Despite all the effort, within days Fiji Police had to contact their New Zealand counterparts with an embarrassing admission: Umarji had fled the country and was in India.

He eventually tired of exile. In early 2022, he contacted his high-powered defence lawyer David Jones, KC, to arrange his surrender to New Zealand police.

Umarji pleaded guilty and was allowed to return to Fiji to sort his affairs before handing himself in for sentencing.

Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.