Ryszard Wilk, brought back to New Zealand in 2019 to face charges, has pleaded not guilty. Photo / Interpol
Ryszard Wilk, brought back to New Zealand in 2019 to face charges, has pleaded not guilty. Photo / Interpol
If you follow the money - bundles of it generated with no legitimate explanation - you can know only one product was behind it.
That's what prosecutor Brian Dickey told jurors in his closing address at the Bastion Pt cocaine trial today.
Russian sailor Aleksandr Cherushev and Polish men Ryszard Wilk and Patryk Lukasz Lukasik have pleaded not guilty to importing cocaine.
But Dickey told the High Court in Auckland that Wilk and his son Ralph Wilk were the hub of an Auckland operation generating piles of cash.
Dickey suggested a flurry of illegal activity in September 2016 brought the Wilks enough cash to quickly pay off a drug courier, start laundering money, then depart.
"They are awash with cash. That's their headache. That's their problem," Dickey said.
But jurors also heard some alleged drugrunners and hangers-on accused each other of treachery, and the Wilks had enough unfinished business to return to New Zealand.
A Customs officer approached the senior Wilk at Auckland International Airport in April 2017 and found him with $70,000 cash, jurors heard.
Dickey told the High Court in Auckland the Wilks were clearly in "the nefarious business of drug importation and supply".
Russian sailor Aleksandr Cherushev was arrested in 2019 in Nelson, years after the alleged cocaine importation, which he denies ever happened. Photo / Supplied
He said at least $1million was laundered in transactions allegedly linked to sales of imported drugs.
"It casts an air of unreality about innocent propositions."
Wilk was the cocaine ring boss, Dickey said today.
Lukasik is accused of money laundering but denies the charge.
The Crown claims Cherushev, a seaman on the ship Discovery Bay, imported cocaine in 2016 after taking advantage of lax port security.
Wilk and Lukasik declined to call or give evidence but Cherushev did give evidence in his own defence, rebuffing suggestions he knew about any cocaine business.
Dickey said Cherushev walked off Discovery Bay with kilograms of cocaine which he supplied to Ryszard Wilk in Auckland on September 7, 2016.
The Crown also claimed Cherushev met the Wilks six days later at a New World Mt Maunganui supermarket car park.
"You know very well that you were in the carpark ... being paid your commission on the couriering of cocaine into this country," Dickey said.
He said port security at Tauranga and Auckland was lax, and sailors weren't routinely searched.
Cherushev said at least seven times he knew nothing about cocaine importation.
Cocaine could have been loaded on the ship at Gibraltar, pictured, or Ecuador, a prosecutor said. Photo / 123RF
The Crown has pointed to seized messages from phone apps, surveillance material and cash found in a covert break-in as evidence of a cocaine conspiracy.
Dickey suggested cocaine could have been smuggled onto Discovery Bay in Ecuador, or even Gibraltar.
Cherushev said even as the ship's second-on-command, he would not get advance warning of where Discovery Bay would be going.
