More than four tonnes of cocaine – worth as much as one and a half billion dollars on our streets – was destined for New Zealand before it was intercepted near French Polynesia earlier this month.
A New Zealand joint Intelligence, Customs and Defence operation dubbed "Kiwa" which has been monitoring suspicious activity in the Pacific worked with French and US authorities to intercept the 4.24 tonnes of cocaine.
Customs deputy chief executive of operations Jamie Bamford told 1News "good intelligence" indicated "the drugs were destined for New Zealand".
Bamford said there were sizeable challenges for New Zealand as the amount of cocaine from central and south America to markets like New Zealand was increasing.
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He said there was enough cocaine in the shipment to feed the New Zealand market for nine years – based on the wastewater levels of consumption across New Zealand.
"We really have to use good intelligence to understand what's coming across our borders, what is slipping through, what is being consumed ," he said.
Trans-national crime expert, Jose Sousa-Santos from Canterbury University 's Pacific Regional Security Hub, said the huge amount was clearly too much for our market and that revealed a sobering reality: New Zealand is a major transit point in the Pacific drug trafficking highway.
"What the cartels have realised is we have shorelines which are not patrolled... [the shipment] would have come to New Zealand then be sent on to Australia where it would not be designated as coming from a high risk country."
Within a three week period this year, more than 12 tonnes has been seized in Fiji and French Polynesia but Sousa-Santos said there was much more getting through.
New 'catch and release' policy
Meanwhile, the way the region previously worked together to deal with regional security has come under a new threat.
Two high seas seizures in the last few weeks near French Polynesia resulted in the French seizing and destroying the cocaine on board – but releasing the vessel and crew in a new strategy designed to avoid a costly legal and court process.
The ship carrying the drugs destined for New Zealand was headed back towards South America.
1News understands another of the vessels that was intercepted by the French – with 4.87 tonnes of cocaine destined for Australia – the MV Raider, was currently in New Zealand waters near the Kermadec Islands. The drug ship was last week in Rarotonga after making a distress call because of engine problems.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said New Zealand was not involved in this particular operation.
"New Zealand authorities immediately provided support to the Cook Islands to deny the vessel entry into the country and to make certain it left immediately once repairs were made," he said.
Sousa-Santos said the French strategy sent the wrong message to cartels – syndicates in South America willing to run the gauntlet. The French approach also disrupted police efforts to track drugs on board vessels, he said.
"Its very reactive and, dare I say it, very selfish tactics being utilised by the French in the Pacific."
The issue would likely continue to grow for the region as more cocaine – often in semi submersible crafts known as narco subs – flood through the Pacific.
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