Simple life for partner in big drug deal

A former drug-runner does time on the Waiheke Island jogging circuit, where Tony Wall caught up with him.

A former drug lord who helped smuggle the biggest known shipment of cannabis into Australia and spent millions of dollars in profits is now living with his elderly mother on Waiheke Island.

Lloyd Arthur Saxon has been freed from an Australian jail after serving eight years of a 13-year sentence for his part in a drug and money-laundering operation that sent Australian authorities into a spin.

His brother, former Auckland rock tour promoter Ian Hall Saxon, considered the Mr Big of the Australian drug scene in the late 1980s and once Australia's most wanted man, remains in jail.

New Zealand police were alerted last year when Lloyd Saxon, the younger of the brothers at 45, was deported to his country of birth.

Sources told the Weekend Herald that immigration staff were surprised when Lloyd Saxon, instead of flying back courtesy of the Australian Government, paid his own way and flew first class.

He is now living with his mother in her modest home in Hekerua Rd and is involved in island life, helping with ticketing and seating for a jazz festival in April.

Waiheke residents were surprised to learn that Saxon, whose wiry frame is seen most days jogging the twisty, bush-clad backroads of the island, is a former drug-runner.

The Saxon brothers and a third man smuggled 10 tonnes of cannabis resin into Australia by boat in 1989 and generated incredible profits.

In 1990, when police raided a Sydney garage rented by Lloyd Saxon, they found $7.13 million in cash in $100 bills packed in two suitcases.

But that was small beer - an order was later made against Ian Saxon to repay the Australian Government $96 million in laundered profits, believed to be the biggest proceeds-of-crime action in the world.

Only $13.75 million of the loot was recovered.

Ian Saxon made headlines when he escaped from Sydney's Long Bay jail in a laundry van while awaiting trial in 1993.

He was eventually rounded up in San Diego in 1995 and sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in jail.

Lloyd Saxon, a carpenter by trade, is believed to have spent his prison sentence keeping fit, running several kilometres a day.

He was out for a jog when the Weekend Herald caught up with him yesterday. He declined a full interview.

"I'm not newsworthy," he said. "I'm just a side-issue - my brother's the newsworthy one."

Asked if he was trying to put his past behind him, Mr Saxon replied: "No way, it's part of my life and there's parts I'm proud of ... It was a great experience ... I can handle anything now I've survived eight years in jail."

Mr Saxon said he was straight-up with people about his prison past. "But I shouldn't have been there in the first place."

Last year he failed in an attempt to have his convictions quashed on the grounds that his brother put the drugs and money in his garage without his knowledge.

Mr Saxon, who has bought a property in Oneroa and is getting ready to build a house, receives an Army pension for damage to an eardrum he received while in the New Zealand Army in his youth.

His mother, Jean Gillam, said the Australian police seemed to think her sons had stashed away some of their millions, but she had seen no sign of it.

"If there is any money I'm afraid my boys don't have it."