It’s a frightening new era for organised crime in New Zealand. Over a decade, everything has changed.
Gone are the days when a 1kg drug bust at a notorious gang pad was front page news.
The long-standing record of nearly 100kg of methamphetamine was shattered in 2016 when 500kg was smuggled onto 90 Mile Beach.
The jaw-dropping discovery was seen as an outlier, a freakish anomaly.
Not anymore. Seizures upwards of 500kg are now almost routine as global crime syndicates – including Mexican cartels – target New Zealand as a small but lucrative market.
But while more drugs are seized than ever before, an enormous amount is still getting in.
The consumption of meth in New Zealand more than doubled in 2024 to the highest levels ever recorded in the national wastewater testing.
A little more than 15kg of meth was detected each week in June last year.
For the next six months, weekly consumption exceeded 29kg and peaked at 39kg.
The statistics were so frightening that by February, the coalition Government appointed a group of experts to advise Cabinet on how to tackle the growing threat of transnational organised crime.
The independent panel was chaired by Steve Symon, a senior partner at law firm Meredith Connell, and reported to Casey Costello, the Customs Minister and Associate Police Minister.
Other members included former senior police officers John Tims and Craig Hamilton, sociologist and gang researcher Dr Jarrod Gilbert, and Owen Loeffellechner, a banking security expert.
Every month since then, the ministerial advisory group has produced a report on six different topics with advice for the Government to consider.
The final report is now sitting on Costello’s desk and expected to be released publicly by the end of October.
The Government – comprising three political parties that promote a “tough-on-crime” approach – will then have to take action, or face potential backlash from voters.
The following are summaries of the six reports so far.
The first report by the ministerial advisory group set out the true scale of the threat in stark terms.
The availability of methamphetamine was an indicator that organised crime was thriving in New Zealand, the panel wrote, which had a devastating impact on many lives.
“New Zealand is losing the fight against transnational, serious, organised crime. This is not from a lack of will. The people involved, and the agencies they work for, are dedicated and passionate ... but current activities are not keeping pace with the accelerated growth of organised crime,” the group’s March report warned.
“Successive Governments have set ambitious targets. There have been endless reports, committees, sub-committees, and working groups talking about these strategies. Despite these efforts, organised crime is worse than ever and continues to grow.”
Since first convening in late February, the panel had met with government agencies, such as Inland Revenue, the Serious Fraud Office and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
They also met with representatives from banks and other private stakeholders such as New Zealand Post, Auckland Airport, as well as the Salvation Army and gang members.
Consistent themes raised in the discussions were concerns about poor information sharing, the corruption of “trusted” insiders, as well as violence and intimidation.
The expert panel noted that Costello wanted a “step change” in the way government law enforcement and regulatory agencies work, individually and together, to “detect, deter and dismantle” organised crime groups.
“It will take new ways of thinking, and bold changes, to alter the course for New Zealand.”
The oft-repeated phrase that “crime doesn’t pay” is a cliché and also a fallacy.
“Of course, crime pays,” was the headline in the advisory group’s second report, as organised crime was like any other business and exists to maximise profit.
But while money was the primary motivation for underworld figures, cash was also a weakness for law enforcement and regulatory bodies to target.
The advisory group outlined how loopholes in the financial system were exploited to shift criminal profits, and urged the Government to do more to interrupt the money flow overseas.
Industries like construction, horticulture and hospitality were “high risk” for money laundering and should be banned from paying wages in cash, according to one of the recommendations of the panel.
“In a perfect world, removing cash from the economy completely would have the greatest impact on organised crime,” the advisory group wrote to Costello.
“But we recognise this is not realistic at this time and New Zealanders should be assured of their ability to use cash for lawful purposes.”
The advisory group pointed to Sweden as a country that had introduced policies to reduce the prevalence of physical cash over time.
Another example is France, where monthly salaries in excess of $2800 must be paid through the banking system. In Italy, the payment of wages in cash is prohibited.
Similar measures could be introduced in New Zealand, the advisory group wrote, including a mandate for the electronic payment of wages in “high-risk” industries like construction, hospitality and agriculture.
“Payment of wages with cash is common in a range of industries – usually increasing the risks of tax evasion and exploitation of migrants and other vulnerable workers,” the panel wrote.
“Numerous countries have introduced statutory requirements to ensure that wage payments are made through verifiable, electronic means, to enhance compliance and combat financial misconduct.”
Another option was to prohibit payment in cash for certain services, such as lawyers, accountants, real-estate and immigration agents, precious metal dealers and jewellers.
As well as tightening controls on cash and cryptocurrency – such as banning 200 “crypto ATMs” – the advisory group made a number of recommendations to assist police investigations.
These included giving police more powers to freeze suspected criminal assets, make it easier to prosecute money laundering offences, and introduce surveillance warrants to monitor bank accounts in real time.
“Organised crime can move at the speed of the global finance system – enforcement agencies can only move at the speed of the law,” the advisory group wrote.
New Zealand’s reputation as a country largely free from corruption has long been a source of national pride and international credibility.
However, this perception was being undermined by a growing body of evidence, according to the advisory group’s third report.
“Compromised police officers, immigration officials, and private sector employees in our ports and airports have facilitated drug smuggling, leaked sensitive information, and undermined the integrity of our border system,” the expert panel wrote.
“These vulnerabilities are not incidental – organised crime groups actively cultivate them ... if left unchecked, this cycle will erode the integrity of New Zealand’s institutions and undermine our collective security.”
They recommended establishing a central authority to manage reporting and investigation of corruption, modernising out-of-date laws, longer prison sentences, and stronger vetting of employees in high-risk industries as part of a national anti-corruption strategy.
Enforcement agencies told the group that most significant interceptions of illicit drugs through ports and airports were planned as “rip-on, rip-off” jobs; where trusted insiders helped to retrieve concealed shipments before Customs could inspect them.
The local anecdotal evidence was consistent with a global report which estimated that 70% of maritime seizures worldwide involved links to trusted insiders.
“When individuals in border security, customs, or immigration are compromised, criminal groups can exploit these weak points to smuggle drugs, weapons, other illicit goods, and people with minimal detection,” the advisory group wrote to Costello.
“Bribery, coercion and cronyism can transform ports, airports, and checkpoints into open channels.”
In the context of organised crime, the ministerial group defined corruption as the abuse of access or authority to meet the objectives of criminal networks - giving access to protection, sensitive information and the ability to act with impunity.
This was particularly concerning because of New Zealand’s ties with our closest neighbours in the Pacific region.
As with New Zealand, for a long time the Pacific Islands were largely seen as immune from high levels of international organised crime due to their remoteness. This is no longer the case.
Drug cartels from the Americas, gangs from New Zealand and Australia, as well as Asian criminal networks are all increasing their involvement in the Pacific.
Fiji, in particular, had emerged as a key transit point for major drug shipments.
“While the direct consequences for Pacific nationals of organised crime is already appearing – the influx of drugs, for example – there is a real risk the nurturing corruption environment will lead to organised crime groups becoming entrenched and dominating all aspects of society to the point where it comes impossible to stop a series of narco-states being established on New Zealand’s doorstep,” the ministerial group wrote.
“New Zealand, therefore, not only has a moral obligation to assist its Pacific neighbours, but a very practical reason to do so.”
The first three reports focused on enforcement by government agencies.
But the June report highlighted the need to support communities and businesses as partners in the fight against the drug trade.
The advisory group said that breaking long-term, intergenerational cycles will require sustained and concerted strategy to address the symptoms, as well as the root causes, of organised crime.
“Organised crime is run as a business – take away the customers and the business is no longer viable,” the panel wrote.
“The costs of organised crime are unavoidable – the question is whether we pay for it through increased efforts to reduce demand [for drugs] or through enforcement, or through the longer-term costs of social harms including the costs of imprisonment.”
The advisory group noted the value of community-based support groups for addiction, which are often more accessible and cost-effective than residential treatment facilities.
It also highlighted the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities (ROCC) programme which runs across seven different police districts.
Following enforcement action, for example a covert drug operation targeting a local gang, services provided to the affected community through the ROCC programme include: drug and alcohol counselling, mentoring for youth, prisoner reintegration and supporting navigating social welfare services.
Funding for the ROCC programme is due to stop at the end of the financial year.
The ministerial advisory group voiced its support for the cross-agency to carry on the work, and other prevention-focused approaches, which could be funded by future government Budgets.
While carried at a grassroots-level in the community, these programmes should be part of the national strategy to target organised crime and potentially coordinated by the Social Investment Agency.
The ministerial group also recommended investment into education to shift public attitudes.
“This is not about preaching right from wrong. It is about providing communities with the information they need to understand what is happening in their backyards, why it is happening, and how to help to reduce the harm and be part of the solution.”
The biggest barrier to New Zealand’s ability to tackle organised crime was a lack of information sharing.
The ministerial advisory group heard “repeatedly” that constraints on information sharing meant law enforcement agencies could not keep pace with the rapidly evolving criminal landscape.
“As we have said before – organised crime can move at the speed of digital technology, but enforcement agencies can only move at the speed of the law,” the panel wrote in their July report.
“The public reasonably expects government agencies to use information that it has collected to lawfully target organised crime, both domestically and internationally. That requires the information to be proactively shared. That is not happening.
“There also appears to be a deeply rooted culture of a risk-averse approach towards proactive sharing of information.”
In a section of the report titled “Organised crime is organised – we are not”, the expert panel said that while there are legal avenues for information to be shared among government departments, such as memoranda of understanding, they are not applied consistently.
In particular, Inland Revenue (IR), which holds tax records that can be crucial to investigations into organised crime, was singled out for mention.
“IR has told us that it recognises the approach it has traditionally taken to information sharing may have been too conservative, and there is scope to be more pragmatic,” the expert panel wrote.
“This mirrors feedback we received from a number of other government agencies.”
The advisory group recommended the establishment of a national plan, rather than separate ones for individual government departments, to clearly set out what information can be shared.
This national framework should be accompanied by a “data lake” – a platform, or centralised repository, to make the data easy to search.
In time, artificial intelligence (AI) could also interrogate the data to identify trends or other leads for further investigation.
To move away from a risk-averse culture, the panel also recommended that information-sharing benchmarks be set as performance measures for the chief executives of government departments.
“Senior leaders steer the direction of their agencies – if they are motivated to improve the culture, that motivation should filter down through the organisation.”
For leaders of government agencies to be held accountable for meeting those targets, someone has to be in charge.
That someone would need to be a Government minister with a dedicated focus on organised crime, according to the sixth report by the advisory group.
The report described organised crime as the “number one” threat to national security, but the growing risk has not been treated as such by successive governments and agencies.
There is already a national strategy which outlines initiatives, policies and legislative framework to support government agencies.
However, the expert report notes that, five years on, methamphetamine availability is at “unprecedented levels” and the social and economic harm from organised crime – including drugs, fraud, migrant exploitation and cyber crime – have never been higher.
At least 13 different ministers – many with competing interests – who hold some responsibility for delivering the government’s strategy, which has led to a lack of consistency, prioritisation and cohesion.
The solution, according to the advisory group, is to appoint a Government minister to focus on organised crime.
“Ministerial priorities heavily influence ‘current state’ agency action. If disrupting organised crime is not seen as a political priority, agencies are less likely to allocate resources or focus attention on it,” the expert panel wrote.
“Cultural barriers within agencies, such as a belief that organised crime is outside their mandate, also hinder cross-sector collaboration and accountability.”
This proposed ministerial portfolio would need to be backed up by a new oversight body, similar to how the Serious Fraud Office or Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority were established in response to an emerging threat.
With this support, the minister would be expected to push new laws and policy development, hold agencies to account, lead public awareness campaigns and targeted social investment in vulnerable communities.
The advisory group said that previous efforts to establish an “all-of-government” approach to combatting organised crime were well-intentioned but lacked the sustainable leadership, governance and accountability needed to drive system-wide change.
“We cannot, as a country, afford to repeat these mistakes.”
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, Gangster’s Paradise and Underworld.