Mosese Laumanu Uele (48) was sentenced last week to five years and five months in prison for the importation of pseudo ephedrine, the largest shipment of the illicit drug into New Zealand ever discovered.

The owner of Ezi World Cargo, which transports freight for the Pacific Islands, had pleaded guilty to the charge after more than 250kg of drugs was swapped with boxes of cornstarch inside an Auckland International Airport cargo zone controlled by Customs.

Mr Justice Mark Woolford said although he was not the prime mover but he played an important role because of his business and license to operate in a customs controlled area.

The New Zealand Herald reported that intercepted phone calls showed one of the main Operation Ghost targets, Da Wen Shao was in frequent contact with a former staff member of Ezi World.

He said Uele had initially rebuffed approaches from his former employee to help smuggle drugs but the financial temptation, an offer of $60,000 became too great.

She left a van unattended in a supermarket car park in October last year, which Uele drove into Ezi World on George Bolt Memorial Driver. Later that night, police covertly took the van into a  nearby customs compound and tested the powder and found genuine cornstarch before resealing the boxes and returned them to Ezi World.

Sometime over the next three days, Uele swapped the cornstarch with boxes labeled potato starch but containing pseudoephedrine. He later left the van in an Onehunga car park, where it was taken and the 250kg drug cache split at safe houses in Avondale and Blockhouse Bay.

Justice Woolford accepted Uele’s involvement was a one off and totally out of character, which had previously included generous donations to the Tongan community.

Raids

The total amount of pseudoephedrine seized in October and December raids was nearly 600kg enough to cook $172 million of P including 260kg disguised as breadcrumbs inside a shipping container at the Ports of Auckland.

Homes, cars and cash worth more than $20 million were also seized and restrained under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act.