$35,000 a week from drugs

Abe Wharewaka in 1986 when he was the public face of gangs.

One of the grandfathers of New Zealand gangs made $35,000 a week from a spectacularly lucrative drug operation.

Abraham Wharewaka, 62, was this week convicted in the High Court at Auckland on charges including manufacturing methamphetamine and cultivating cannabis after being busted in what the police named "Operation Soprano".

The veteran president of Black Power's Sindi chapter kept meticulous notes of sales of around $70,000 a fortnight at his tinnie house, known as "the marae".

His handwritten accounts detail running workers' "shifts", his spectacular income and paying wages to gang members to staff the house in Albert St, Otahuhu, South Auckland.

The entrepreneurial Wharewaka became the household face of gangs in the 1980s by getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Government for work trusts. As evidence unfolded in court, he was often dressed in a dapper jacket in the chapter's orange and black colours.

Police raided "the marae" - which had ornate carvings over the entrance depicting the Wharewaka family history - many times over the years.

But it would always be back in business the same day, selling "tinnies" of cannabis.

It was finally closed for good in July 2003 after a series of police searches. After the final raid a sign went up: "Closed for business - Busted."

In one raid police found 437 tinnies ready for sale at $20 a time.

Deals were done through a curtained window and the premises were guarded by closed-circuit television. Wharewaka's brother Timothy Wharewaka managed the tinnie house.

Often police saw dozens of people arriving in cars, queuing to buy drugs. Some were schoolchildren.

Sometimes during a raid, confused purchasers would try to buy tinnies from officers, despite being shown police identification.

After the closing of the illicit trade, burglaries in the area - a source of income to buy drugs - plummeted.

Detective Sergeant Peter Jones said after the verdict: "We believe that we have closed down the busiest drug-dealing address in the South Auckland district without a doubt.

"A lot of the residents of Albert St complained a number of times about intimidation and being threatened in their own homes.

"There were also incidents where firearms were discharged in the street from rival gangs trying to move in on the drug-dealing activities."

Wharewaka set up the Sindi chapter in 1978 and is understood to have received Government grants to build 12 units in a housing project at 14 Albert St.

Over the years a number of the units were used to sell drugs.

Cannabis was grown indoors at a property in Harris Rd, East Tamaki, to feed the Albert St retail operation.

Wharewaka lived at the Aquarius Massage Parlour in Torrens Rd, East Tamaki, with his partner, Rania Niazi, 24, who was also found guilty of drugs charges. The prosecution described Niazi, originally from Egypt, as Wharewaka's "super PA".

Swabs taken from a property across the road, which Niazi rented, showed that methamphetamine had been manufactured. Equipment and chemicals for making the drug were also found in a rubbish skip.

Wharewaka's lawyer, Peter Kaye, said that his client had no knowledge of what was going on but Crown prosecutor Bruce Northwood said Wharewaka was the president, the boss, and knew what was happening.

Justice David Baragwanath is to pass sentence next month.

Wharewaka has come full circle since the 1980s when his gang-based Tatau te Iwi Work Trust was hiring out its labour to contractors and attracting not inconsiderable Government support for its efforts.

In 1986 he and his Black Power buying team bought 18 Harley-Davidson choppers, a load of spare parts and a purple Cadillac in Los Angeles.

At that time, after eight years of Government work schemes and contract labour work, there were 94 employees, a fleet of 15 trucks and a bus for the gang's contracting work and two developed sites - the "factory" and the "factory units" in South Auckland.

Abe Wharewaka was the eldest of 14 children born in Auckland during World War II.

He grew up in Panmure and told the Herald in 1986 that most young people at his economic level "pulled a job". It was "petty stuff" but he was "not going to be any different".

He never got to secondary school because, says one account, the family could not afford the Penrose High School uniform.

Attracted by the unity of gangs, he joined in 1978. By the late 1970s, he was Black Power's national president and, in his words, "short-tempered, explosive, dangerous", he said in the 1986 interview.

"I had the capacity to kill someone at will."

In 1979 he was jailed for 18 months after a confrontation between Black Power and Headhunters.

During the period when the Black Power work schemes were at their height, the Labour Department helped with $605,000 over 36 months.

Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon supported their earlier work programmes.

But there were often financial troubles, partly due to a habit of using assets from one exercise to back the next.

In 1988 Abe and his brothers John, David and Jake were convicted and fined for selling liquor without a licence at the "factory" head-quarters.

OPERATION SOPRANO

ABRAHAM JOSEPH WHAREWAKA (SNR), 62

Guilty of manufacturing methamphetamine; selling cannabis; belonging to an organised criminal group; possession of cannabis for supply x 5; cultivating cannabis; possession of toluene for making methamphetamine; possession of equipment for manufacturing methamphetamine.

RANIA MOHSEN NIAZI, 24

Guilty of manufacturing methamphetamine; selling cannabis; possession of cannabis for supply x 5; participating in an organised criminal group.

ABRAHAM JOSEPH WHAREWAKA (JNR), 38

Guilty of participating in an organised criminal group; possession of a loaded pistol.

TIMOTHY JAKE WHAREWAKA, 52

Guilty of participating in an organised criminal group; selling cannabis.