The trial of alleged jet-setting drug lord Xavier Valent has turned the spotlight on the lives of ordinary New Zealanders who become pawns in the methamphetamine trade.
But will evidence of a secret Northland meth lab, harried drug runners and a former spy turned polygraph examiner convince a jury to convict the former Auckland Grammar boy? George Block reports.
It looked like a forgotten shack in the middle of nowhere.
But the decrepit hut tucked away in a remote corner of bush in Northland was in fact a meth production hub for one of New Zealand’s largest ever drug syndicates, a jury has heard.
The Herald on Sunday has been granted exclusive access by the High Court to photos taken by police specialists of the Whangaruru shack the Crown alleges was used by people working at the behest of Xavier Valent, aka Harry Whitehead.
Valent, an Auckland Grammar alumnus, is standing trial in the Auckland High Court facing more than 100 serious drug charges, covering the importation, supply and manufacture of various Class A and B drugs.
He faces a life sentence if convicted and denies all charges.
Terrique Treasurer, who is standing trial alongside Valent and alleged to be a key lieutenant in the operation, has also pleaded not guilty. His defence lawyers have asked the jury not to see him as simply “guilty by association”.
The prosecution alleges that at the peak of his powers, Valent was pulling the strings from overseas of an operation that brought tonnes of drugs into New Zealand including meth, MDMA, cocaine and meth precursor ephedrine through the post via courier parcels.
On Friday, with the Crown case still going, the third week of the trial wrapped.
This week the jury heard from a former intelligence agent who administered polygraph tests to people allegedly working for Valent and a man who said he was making up to 20 meth deliveries per day for the kingpin - a number only limited by Auckland traffic.
Into the deep end
The drug runner, who told the court how Auckland traffic limited deliveries, was the third of several co-operating witnesses to be called by the Crown.
All received immunity from prosecution on certain charges and most received lighter sentences for their role in the syndicate in exchange for co-operation. Their names are suppressed.
Like other witnesses, the man said he was drawn into the operation while he was battling financially.
His wife had lost her job and a childhood friend of his moved in with the couple.
That friend was a man whose name has cropped up repeatedly as a key figure in the syndicate, who formed a nexus between various underlings in the operation.
The witness noticed the friend often had large wads of cash in his wallet.
At one point, he caught him with about a kilogram of meth sitting on tin foil with a heater blowing warm air across it - meth is wet after production and needs to be dried before sale.
The witness said he was soon approached about “doing some work”.
His first assignment saw him thrown in the deep end.
He was sent to deliver a key ingredient of methamphetamine, ephedrine, to a clandestine laboratory in Northland.
“My first job was basically I was dropped off at the end of a road up north with a half a kilo of ephedrine, and left on the side of the road, and some people came and picked me up and we went on a boat to what I was told was an island.”
It was not an island but rather a clearing with a shack hidden in the bush at Whangaruru, a remote peninsula and harbour southeast of Paihia.
He discovered he was part of a large-scale methamphetamine production led by an alleged cook called “Aussie Dave”. The man from across the ditch was described in court as having an oily complexion and an uncanny knack for making the Class A drug.
After two days and nights of cooking meth at the shack, where the illicit chemists stayed awake the whole time, Aussie Dave gave him a ride back to Auckland, the witness said.
They went to collect their money from a man called “Gold”, whom the witness described as a skinny man of African descent.
The Crown says Treasurer went by the alias Gold, perhaps due to the colour of his BMW.
In the three years the witness worked in the syndicate he would meet Gold many times, with the witness telling the jury the man was responsible for storing and distributing the drugs.
That was the same role the witness said he played.
He would receive his orders each morning via encrypted messaging app Wickr, telling him what was to be picked up or delivered, how much each bag should weigh and the amount of money to collect in return.
The witness said he was paid up to $2000 per week but this could be docked by the leader of the syndicate if he failed to message back on time, which would incur a $500 fine.
He would work 12 hours a day or more, seven days a week, but there was a limit on how much each worker could achieve.
“No more than 18 to 20 tasks a day,” he said.
“Otherwise it just becomes unmanageable. And you can only be in so many locations with Auckland traffic unfortunately.”
He described runs down to Christchurch for the syndicate, where he would drive down and cross the ferry with kilograms of drugs, once returning with $600,000 in cash.
During his time in the syndicate, the witness estimated he would have handled a literal tonne of drugs for Valent across hundreds of packages - 40 per cent meth, 40 per cent MDMA and the remainder being various other substances including cocaine, GHB or ecstasy tablets, he estimated.
Midway through 2019 the curtain came down on his life as a drug runner.
By that point his wife had also become enmeshed in the operation and a central Auckland apartment they used to store and prepare meth before sale had caught fire.
Knowing what emergency services would find, they went on the run, consulted a lawyer and eventually resolved to hand themselves in.
The witness, who was accompanied by his father, was arrested at a bus stop on the North Shore in September 2019.
Police charged him with unlawful possession of a sawn-off shotgun, possession for supply of methamphetamine and MDMA and importing MDMA.
He pleaded guilty within a month and received four years, despite meth supply carrying a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Discounts were applied for his guilty plea and his assistance to authorities, and he received immunity from prosecution for further offences committed within the syndicate.
The witness is only partway through his evidence. Partway through the week, he received what the jury heard was an accidental injury requiring medical attention before he can resume his testimony.
The lie-detecting spy
On Friday afternoon, the Crown called as a witness a neatly presented man in late middle age, Craig Gubbins.
Under questioning from prosecutor Fiona Culliney, Gubbins said he had joined the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service in 1980 and spent the next 25 years as an intelligence officer.
He retired at 50 and started a private intelligence business before undertaking training in Missouri at a law enforcement academy, where he received a diploma in polygraph examination.
Gubbins then began offering paid lie detector tests to clients.
Polygraph examiners use a machine to detect physiological changes in a subject in response to questioning, thereby determining the accuracy of answers.
Proponents including Gubbins claim an accuracy rate of 87 to 94 per cent, but their efficacy is disputed and controversial.
The American Psychological Association has said there is little evidence they can be effectively used to detect lies.
Under cross-examination by Lincoln Burns, one of Treasurer’s defence lawyers, Gubbins said he required approval from the US State Department to import his polygraph machine, the Lafayette LX 5000, because of its potential to be used by dictatorships.
Gubbins said he conducted several lie detector tests at the request of a man who introduced himself as Xavier Valent, with whom he had just one in-person meeting, at the beginning of their interaction, in 2016.
The Crown alleges Valent used the lie detector tests to determine who was stealing from him and to maintain loyalty in the syndicate.
He would provide questions to ask during the examination, claiming they were regarding “precious gems” or cash that had gone missing, Gubbins said.
The court heard earlier that the syndicate suffered a major setback when a safehouse was robbed, and the Crown says Valent believed a worker’s loose lips were the cause.
Gubbins said he suspected something was untoward with Valent’s subjects.
“They’re unlike any polygraphs I’ve ever examined,” he said.
“They were all very frightened.
“I realised they were likely involved in criminal activity. That’s why I didn’t inquire into their backgrounds.”
After that first and only in-person meeting, emails from Valent came around 3am or 4am, which Gubbins said led him to suspect the client was overseas.
One of those emails read: “Hi Craig, I have a young man who needs to clear his name. Do you have time slots available tomorrow,” Gubbins told the court.
Among the nervous subjects he questioned at Valent’s behest was a man who arrived presenting as a nervous wreck and claiming he was late because he thought the police Eagle helicopter was following him.
When he reached around to attach an electrode he noticed a pistol sticking out of the man’s pants.
“He was very embarrassed to have turned up with this,” Gubbins said.
“I said ‘you won’t need that here’ and we continued with the test.”
Under cross-examination from Sumudu Thode, one of the lawyers assisting Valent, Gubbins said he did not report the fact the man was carrying a gun to the police at the time.
In an email to Valent, Gubbins said the subject “impressed me as quite loyal”.
“He was co-operative and respectful and wanted to prove his innocence,” Gubbins wrote.
“Once again, thanks Craig for a great service,” Valent allegedly replied.
Grammar boy to alleged drug kingpin
Crown prosecutors Culliney and Ben Kirkpatrick say Auckland Grammar alumnus Valent, 34, was a small-time teenage drug dealer trading in MDMA and LSD when jailed over a decade ago.
In prison he made the connections he would need to start what would become one of New Zealand’s largest-ever drug syndicates, the Crown says.
As Customs closed in on his nascent cartel in 2016, prosecutors say Valent fled overseas, where he continued to grow his operation with the help of a network of minions in New Zealand.
Tonnes of drugs including methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine and key meth precursor chemical ephedrine were smuggled into the country via the postal system hidden in everyday items like books or truck exhausts, the Crown says.
All the while, Valent was living a jet-set lifestyle in Europe, Asia and Central America, pulling the strings of the syndicate while on the run from Kiwi authorities, prosecutors say.
Veteran drug squad cop Detective Sergeant John Sowter and his National Organised Crime Group colleague Detective Sergeant Angela Waugh oversaw the investigation dubbed Operation Mystic that culminated in Valent’s arrest at the Italian border in 2020 and eventual extradition.
Sowter told the court a British passport allegedly used by Valent during his years on the run, under the name Troy Carlton, had stamps from Turkey, China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the Maldives, Qatar, Bahamas and Panama.
A man the Crown alleges to be Valent sent a postcard from the Maldives signed the “Don” promising similar luxury and riches to one of his workers risking everything in New Zealand, the jury has heard.
Valent’s defence hinges on identity.
It will rely on the assertion the Crown cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt he was the Mr Big who sent orders under a range of aliases, including “Global Trading” and “Orchestrator”.
He is self-representing but is assisted in court by two defence lawyers appointed as amicus curiae - Nicholas Leader and Thode.
Neither they nor Treasurer’s defence counsel Ian Tucker and Lincoln Burns have opened their case in the marathon trial, set down for a six-week fixture.
But the shape of their defence has begun to coalesce via lengthy cross-examination.
The lawyers have worked on blackening the character of Crown witnesses by having them admit dishonesty in statements to investigators or to co-accused in an attempt to undermine their credibility.
One fired back, saying he was involved in the meth trade so of course he wouldn’t use his real name.
Leader earlier scored a point in cross-examination by having one witness admit she believed at one time Global Trading and Fokus - which prosecutors say were nicknames used interchangeably by Valent - were different people.
The trial continues on Monday.
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