KEY POINTS:
A New Zealander who helped smuggle 10 tonnes of cannabis resin into Australia has been deported home after serving 13 years in jail.
Ian Saxon, 65, was the former drug lord who masterminded the 1989 shipment into Australia by boat.
When police raided a Sydney garage rented by his brother Lloyd in 1990, they found NZ$7.13 million in cash in $100 bills packed in two suitcases.
That was just the tip of the iceberg, The Dominion Post reports today. An order was later made against Ian Saxon to pay the Australian Government NZ$96 million in laundered profits.
Only NZ$13.75 million was recovered.
Saxon escaped from Sydney's Long Bay jail while awaiting trial in 1993, but was found two years later living in a beach house in San Diego, in the United States.
A well-known Auckland cabaret compere in the 1960s, he later became a rock promoter and tour manager.
His brother Lloyd Saxon spent eight years in jail.
He was freed in 1999 and moved to Waiheke Island where he works as a carpenter.
He would not say if Ian would stay with him. "He'd probably like it here. My life has got better and better since I've been here, but I don't know what will happen."
- NZPA
