Cocaine courier gets five years' jail

International police co-operation has thwarted a plan to flood Australia with $30 million of cocaine via New Zealand, the High Court at Auckland heard yesterday.
One of those involved, courier Patricia Paulo Maldonado Figueroa, aged 33, of Santiago in Chile, was jailed for five and a half years by Justice John Laurenson after she admitted importing almost 1kg of the drug worth $1 million.

Two other people are to face trial.

Prosecutor Bruce Northwood told the judge that police and drug agencies in Australia, New Zealand, Columbia and Chile worked together.

According to the police summary of facts, intercepted telephone calls indicated that one of the other accused, also a South American, was planning to send up to 30kg of the drug through New Zealand to Australia. But finance was needed.

In an effort to fund such large-scale trafficking, it was arranged to send two couriers to New Zealand, each carrying 1kg of cocaine for sale in this country.

Figueroa was kept under surveillance after she passed through Customs at Auckland Airport on September 6 last year.

She and two men were later arrested.

Yesterday Figueroa's lawyer, Andrew Speed, told Justice Laurenson that she was a poor woman from a humble background, an addict who had been exploited by sinister elements.

He asked the judge to take into account that her role as courier was lower down the scale and that she entered an early guilty plea.