Two men accused of helping smuggle more than 500kg of methamphetamine into the country hidden in steel beams have been granted bail.
The men, who work in the construction and oil industries, retained interim name suppression when they appeared in the Auckland District Court before Judge Stephen Bonnar, KC, on Monday morning.
Six people have now been arrested as part of Operation Girder, a joint police and Customs investigation launched after Customs found meth inside a few of 42 steel beams imported from the United States in a shipping container.
The consignment was tracked to a rural Waikato property, raided on Friday, October 4.
Among those arrested were two men who had flown in from Australia and were allegedly in the process of deconstructing the steel beams when police arrived.
Also arrested were a man who works in the construction industry – whose exact occupation and role is suppressed – and another in the petroleum business.
They have both pleaded not guilty to the importation and possession for supply of meth and conspiring to deal with a Class A drug.
At the pair’s appearance in the Auckland District Court on Monday, their lawyers, Matt Goodwin and Tudor Clee, made successful applications for bail for their clients.
Strict publication rules under the Bail Act prevent the Herald printing, at this stage in proceedings, their submissions or those of the Crown on behalf of police, aside from the result. Both men were granted bail on a range of conditions including the surrender of their passports and a stipulation to access and use cellphones only under strict conditions and for limited purposes such as contacting their lawyers or reviewing police disclosure material.
Another man charged as part of the operation appeared briefly today but his bail application was remanded to next week. Others are also expected to seek bail.
Police said they found 515kg of meth in the beams, making it one of New Zealand’s largest drug busts.
Customs analysts flagged the shipment for inspection in September after uncovering anomalies in some of the beams, leading to the consignment being X-rayed.
The investigation expanded to include the National Organised Crime Group and the operation conducted a “controlled delivery” of the steel beams, in an attempt to identify the network behind the importation.
The consignment was tracked to a rural Waikato property, which was raided on Friday, October 4, and led to the men appearing in the Auckland District Court on drug import and supply charges.
One was charged with unlawful possession of firearms after a military-style semi-automatic rifle and ammunition were recovered.
Two other men had flown in from Australia and were in the process of “deconstructing” the steel beams when they were arrested, according to police.
Detective Inspector Colin Parmenter said the seizure is a serious disruption to the wider drug market operating within New Zealand.
“The significant amount seized in this operation is another demonstration of the police and Customs’ partnership and commitment to the disruption and dismantling of transnational organised drug networks,” Parmenter said.
“It’s estimated that this shipment would have gone on to produce 25.7 million individual doses of this destructive drug, and preventing this harm is a key motivation for our staff.”
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 between $100,000 and $150,000 here currently.
These profits have attracted the attention of global organised crime groups and led to a shift in New Zealand’s criminal landscape.
The record for the biggest meth bust was smashed by the 501kg smuggled into the country from a “mother ship” off the coast of 90 Mile Beach, Northland, in 2016.
In 2019, there was another police investigation when 500kg was smuggled into Whakatāne and a Customs operation when 469kg was stopped at the border.
The record was broken again by 613kg smuggled on a flight from Malaysia in February 2022, which was destined for the Comancheros motorcycle gang. Twelve months later, this was dwarfed by the 713kg discovered inside maple syrup bottles from Canada.
While not stopped at the border, the largest cache of the drug was uncovered after the death of Aiden Sagala, 21, who unwittingly drank liquid methamphetamine from a can of beer.
Detectives investigating his death raided a warehouse in Manukau filled with 747kg of meth. The trial of a man accused of manslaughter in connection with Sagala’s death is underway.
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