Ronnie Kivalu was a devoted family man. An honest and hard-working business owner. A generous and gracious member of a church community.
But in a dramatic fall from grace, Kivalu was caught red-handed with two King Cobra gang members unpacking nearly 30kg of methamphetamine he had imported inside frozen vegetables from Tonga.
The double life was exposed during Operation Selena, a covert police and Customs investigation that started when Aisake Feleti was identified handing over $1.2 million to a money-laundering syndicate.
Encrypted messages on Feleti’s phone showed he was importing drugs from the United States with the help of an “insider” at Auckland International Airport.
Sese Vimahi was a senior baggage handler at Air New Zealand who could manipulate the transfer of luggage from international flights so that the bags were never screened by Customs.
While the initial focus of the investigation was to uncover how organised crime groups were so easily smuggling drugs by air, Operation Selena also discovered Feleti was bringing in illicit shipments by sea.
The encrypted conversations extracted from his phone showed he was in regular contact with someone importing food from Tonga. His name was Ronnie Kivalu and he ran a business called R&J Pacific Ltd.
Looking back at the encrypted messages, it was clear to the police that Kivalu had arranged for 7kg of methamphetamine to be concealed among frozen produce in a shipping container that departed Tonga in late March 2021.
When the shipping container was offloaded in the Ports of Auckland in April, Kivalu messaged Feleti to say the meth was almost ready to be picked up (“Morning yup latest tomorrow [fingers crossed emoji”] and to bring ziplock plastic bags for packaging.
A few weeks later, Feleti messaged Kivalu to explain that the Tribesmen motorcycle gang had complained about the poor quality of the drugs, which was making it hard to sell.
The emergence of another source of methamphetamine, by sea, was a lead the police could not ignore. So while they maintained the surveillance of Sese Vimahi and the Air NZ crew, a separate phase of the inquiry, Operation Schrute, was established to focus on Kivalu.
Any freight consignments by R&J Pacific Ltd were flagged with Customs and this paid off immediately on the next shipment, which landed in Auckland in late July 2021.
Among the 477 bags of frozen cassava, taro and kava powder was a single white vinyl sack that raised Customs officials' suspicions.
Inside the sack were two black duffel bags, both padlocked, filled with ziplock plastic bags — wrapped in white electrical tape — containing ice-like crystals that drug testing confirmed to be meth.
The total weight was nearly 30kg.
While Kivalu’s fingerprints were metaphorically all over the methamphetamine, more evidence was needed to prove his involvement.
Operation Schrute investigators made a strategic decision to do a “controlled delivery” of the shipment, where nearly all the drugs were carefully repacked with rock salt (a placebo replacement) and delivered to its destination as if nothing had been found.
Watching patiently could lead to Kivalu being caught red-handed, not to mention anyone else he was working with.
On August 6, 2021, the container was transported to a freight-forwarding company called EIF International Ltd, an import broker used by R&J Pacific Ltd.
One of the EIF storemen was accredited with the Ministry for Primary Industries, which checks imports of food for pests or diseases and was also in charge of unpacking of shipping containers for inspection.
Three days later, the EIF storeman removed the white vinyl sack from the container, put it in the back of his car and drove home to a property in Windrush Close, Māngere.
About two hours later, undercover surveillance staff watched as a silver Volkswagen Golf arrived at the same address.
The driver was Ralph Vuletic, who had previously made headlines as a high-flying property developer convicted of Serious Fraud Office charges nearly a decade earlier.
Vuletic was seen taking two duffel bags to a storage lockup in West Auckland for safekeeping, then returned the next day to retrieve the bags and took them to a house in Mt Wellington. It was Ronnie Kivalu’s family home.
A few hours later, police raided the property. Officers found disposable gloves, electronic scales and a large number of ziplock bags in the garage, along with the 30kg of drug placebo.
Kivalu was arrested but two other men managed to escape by jumping over the back fence.
The pair were tracked down and identified as the Iuvale twins, Nigel and Tony, who were patched members of the King Cobras gang.
Before they had been interrupted, the brothers had been busy with Kivalu breaking down the nearly 30kg of supposed methamphetamine into smaller amounts for resale.
Inside Vuletic’s storage unit, police found 5kg of meth in Chinese gold tea packets — a signature of Sam Gor, an organised crime syndicate in Asia that dominates the global drug trade.
Another kilogram of meth was found in Vuletic’s home, along with a pistol.
Back in Tonga, the person who — acting on Ronnie Kivalu’s instructions — concealed the methamphetamine among the frozen vegetables was also identified.
Kama Manulevu, 45, became the first person in Tongan history to be sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment for drug offending under tough new laws.
In August this year, Kivalu was sentenced in the Auckland District Court after pleading guilty to importing nearly 37kg of the class A drug.
He was supported by a large group of family, friends and senior members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who gave references in support of his character.
The court was told Kivalu was born in Auckland and one of eight siblings raised by their parents, who had emigrated from Tonga.
They worked hard but money was tight. Kivalu got into trouble in his teenage years, hanging around with youth street gangs but was also a talented athlete. He moved to Australia to pursue rugby as a career, and turned his life around without a criminal conviction in 20 years.
Kivalu got married and started a family, eventually having eight children of his own. He moved back to New Zealand in 2015 when his mother died.
The death of his mother led to Kivalu inadvertently reconnecting with his criminal past, his defence lawyer Sumudu Thode said in her sentencing submissions to Judge June Jelas.
This was because Kivalu took on the responsibility for settling his mother’s estate, which was in significant financial difficulty.
Her death and the inherited debt weighed heavily on Kivalu and led to him looking for other ways of making money.
“You could see no other way out of the situation,” Judge Jelas said. “As a result, you have placed yourself and your family in a very difficult situation.”
He was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty and will be eligible for parole after serving five and a half years.
The Iuvale twins pleaded guilty to possession of the class A drug for supply in relation to the nearly 30kg of meth found at Kivalu’s home.
Tony Iuvale was handed a prison term of nine years 10 months, while Nigel was sentenced to 18 years in prison because he was also convicted of separate offences of importing commercial quantities of methamphetamine.
Nigel Iuvale was able to orchestrate the drug smuggling through a network of corrupt baggage handlers at Auckland Airport that was completely independent of Sese Vimahi.
Also known as “Tongan Pablo”, Vimahi is currently serving a prison sentence of 14 years and seven months for helping smuggle 20kg of meth that was uncovered in an earlier investigation.
His time in prison is likely to increase when he is sentenced in February.
Described as Nigel Iuvale’s right-hand man, Vuletic was sentenced to 10 years, while Feleti was imprisoned for 14 years and nine months.
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.
