Two of the Alfa Carbine rifles cut down to pistols were found in the possession of Kishor Chandra Singh during Operation Carbine in 2022. Photo / Supplied
An odd-shaped rifle has become the gangster’s gun of choice because of how easily the firearm can be converted into a handgun.
And new figures released to the Herald show police suspect nearly one-third of all Alfa Carbines shipped into New Zealand have been slipped into the black market by “straw buyers”.
The Alfa firearms have become popular in the criminal underworld because they can be readily cut down into pistols, which are easier to conceal and wield, and have been used in several gang shootings.
The revolver doesn’t eject shell casings to leave behind as incriminating evidence, and is also suspected of being the murder weapon in the Ponsonby Rd shooting last month.
In recent years, police investigating the illegal supply of firearms have uncovered dozens of licensed gun owners who bought Alfa Carbines for unlicensed associates.
The tactic is known as using a “straw buyer”, or retail diversion, which police now believe is the most common way for firearms to end up in criminal hands.
The growing problem with Alfa Carbines was disclosed in a police briefing to Nicole McKee, the Associate Justice Minister who holds the firearms portfolio, and a group of experts advising her.
The presentation by Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Beal highlighted numerous investigations into the retail diversion of the firearm, including a former Hells Angel who recruited a network of “straw buyers” to spend $50,000 on Alfa Carbines and ammunition.
Some were sold to members of the Mongrel Mob, others were delivered to the Killer Beez gang in Auckland during a turf war with the Tribesmen in 2022.
Other investigations revealed a 75-year-old man and his daughter purchased 11 Alfa Carbines for relatives with links to the Comancheros gang, and that former rugby star Matua Parkinson supplied five to a member of the same gang.
These cases are not isolated, according to the police, who told McKee’s advisers in April that a total of 164 Alfa Carbines were suspected of being diverted by straw buyers.
That has now increased to 227, according to the latest police data released to the Herald - or 29 per cent of the total number of Alfa Carbines imported into New Zealand.
“Given the number we can’t account for yet, it is concerning,” said Beal, who was until recently the detective in charge of the specialist Firearms Investigation Team (FIT).
“What we saw was one particular firearm disproportionately turning up in crime scenes, or in the possession of gang members, with alarming regularity. Our belief is that a large number are in the criminal underworld.”
Beal said the Alfa Carbine trend was first discovered when the firearms team started collecting and analysing more than 350,000 sales records over a four-year period. They were looking for unusual purchases that indicated potential retail diversion.
The detectives soon noticed patterns of individuals buying large numbers of Alfa Carbines, which sell for between $1699 and $2499, in a short period - sometimes on the same day - and flagged them for further investigation.
Of the suspicious sales of 227 Alfa Carbines, Beal said 64 had been confirmed as diverted by 15 licensed straw buyers, who were then prosecuted.
Just eight of those firearms had been recovered, in the hands of criminal groups, while the rest had disappeared.
Beal said the other 56 guns had “almost certainly” been diverted into the illicit firearms market.
Of the remaining 163 Alfa Carbines purchased by suspected 52 straw buyers, Beal said 147 were still under active investigation.
“The other 16 purchases have been investigated but there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. The whereabouts of those 16 firearms is unknown.”
The most common explanation given is that the original buyers sold the firearms but cannot remember who bought them, Beal said.
This is because of an only recently closed loophole in the Arms Act that made it simple for “straw buyers” to divert firearms into the black market.
While gun dealers had to keep records of all retail sales for police to inspect, gun owners wanting to sell their firearms to someone else in a private sale did not.
The only legal obligation on private sellers was to sight the prospective buyer’s firearms licence, although this has changed with the introduction of the firearms register in June last year.
While they only make up a small percentage of licensed gun owners, Beal said the number of “straw buyers” identified retrospectively through the 350,000 sales records demonstrated the need for a firearms register.
“That small number can have a huge impact. Looking at individual cases, we’ve seen a single licence holder abusing the privilege to divert 20 firearms,” Beal said.
“Given how durable they are, firearms are around for a long time. The whole time they’re around in the black market or the criminal environment, they pose an ongoing risk to the wider community.”
Police were so concerned about the number of diverted Alfa Carbines that they blocked the most recent application by a gun retailer to import the firearms from the Czech Republic, Beal confirmed.
Anyone wanting to bring firearms into the country must first obtain a permit from the Firearms Safety Authority (Te Tari Pureke).
The most recent application to import Alfa Carbines was in 2022, which Beal said coincided with police becoming aware that criminals were converting the firearms into pistols.
This led to a more cautious approach to the import requests, Beal said, and police shared the findings of their investigations with the Firearms Safety Authority, which then declined the application.
This is despite the fact Alfa Carbines are not banned in New Zealand, or even subject to licence restrictions.
Any future applications to import the firearms would be “considered on their own merits”, Beal said.
The proposed importer was Gun City, New Zealand’s largest retailer of firearms, which had sold nearly all of the Alfa Carbines in the country.
Owner David Tipple said legitimate gun owners were frustrated at straw buyers misusing their licence to supply a firearm to someone who doesn’t.
“It’s even worse if they know that person has humans in their mind as targets and the penalty is home detention.”
He advocated for harsher penalties for anyone caught diverting firearms into the black market, especially those instances that led to a murder.
But Tipple questioned whether blocking the imports of Alfa Carbines would improve public safety, and said there was no way to reliably protect the public by removing something that might be used as a weapon.
As examples, he cited the use of rocks and pencils in murders, terrorists driving trucks into crowds, and knife crime in London.
“To prevent most law-abiding members from having a knife or an Alfa rifle will not increase public safety,” Tipple said.
“Taking something off law-abiding citizens is a useless distraction and an insult to our intelligence.”
Jared Savage is an award-winning journalist who covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006, and is the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.
The pair's sentencing was delayed to give them time to recall where the missing money is.