Mr Asia figure faces trial over Ecstasy haul

A central figure in the Mr Asia syndicate has been committed for trial, accused of importing up to $12 million worth of Ecstasy.

At a depositions hearing in the Auckland District Court yesterday, JPs sent Darryl Leigh Sorby, 54, of Paparoa to the High Court for trial.

His lawyer, John Haigh, QC, conceded there was a prima facie case.

However, he said there would be an "emphatic denial" by Sorby when the case came to court.

Sorby faces charges relating to six alleged shipments of tens of thousands of Ecstasy tablets concealed in crates of furniture and camping equipment from South Africa over a three-year period to May 2002, cannabis importing and money laundering.

Prosecutor David Johnstone told the court that the shipments first came to light when police investigated $400,000 in cash "siphoned' through the trust account of Westmere solicitor Dinesh Patel, who is no longer practising.

That money was used by a co-accused, Zimbabwean Robert Charles De Bruin, to buy a house for cash in Glendowie.

Mr Johnstone said that Sorby and De Bruin were two of the most important people in the criminal enterprise.

He told the JPs that Sorby had earlier admitted his part in laundering the $400,000 and had been dealt with. That was separate from the money-laundering charges he still faces.

The JPs were told that there had already been a number of trials relating to the importation of the Ecstasy and a consignment of 80kg of cannabis, a charge that Sorby also faces.

In those trials defence lawyers suggested that a secret police informer was in fact Sorby.

At the time, the judge ordered the Crown to reveal the name of their informant, but the Crown chose instead to drop a number of charges, allowing an alleged major drugs supplier, Edward Wilcocks, to walk free and return to South Africa.

One man who was convicted in one of the earlier trials, South African Alexander Gavin Smith, who served three years of a nine-year sentence, yesterday gave evidence against Sorby.

He said his own role was to take money back to South Africa.

The drug shipments varied from 10,000 to 36,000 MDMA (Ecstasy) tablets.

Smith said that he saw De Bruin hand Ecstasy tablets to Sorby about six times in the McDonald's carpark in Green Lane and Sorby would give De Bruin money from the previous deal.

He said that Sorby would count out payment in $10,000 lots in the back of a car.

"If it was $100,000, he would count it out in $10,000 bundles," he told the court.

Smith said that after De Bruin's arrest in November 2001, over $1 million was buried in a forest near Sorby's Helensville property while arrangements were made to ship it back to South Africa.

He said that he had intended going back to dig up the money but was arrested in May 2002. He did not know what happened to the cash.

To Mr Haigh, Smith admitted that he lied in his defence at his trial, but he insisted he was telling the JPs the truth about Sorby's involvement. He denied he had been "rewarded" with an early release from prison for giving evidence against Sorby, but acknowledged that the parole board was told of his co-operation with the authorities.

Sorby served 12 years of a 23-year jail sentence in Australia for drug-dealing in the 1970s and early 1980s as part of the Mr Asia syndicate.