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Three men are today starting lengthy jail terms over their failed bid to import $10 million of cocaine into New Zealand.
Justice Rhys Harrison described the trio as "rank amateurs, who lurched along in a haphazard, desperate and at times farcical manner".
The group's ringleader, Juan Carlos Pissano Briaturi, 46, was yesterday sentenced to nine years in jail, while his brother Roberto Mannel Pissano Briaturi, 33, was jailed for five years.
Their friend, Horacio Gabriel Bandera, 40, was locked up for four years and eight months.
On Monday, the three men - all from Uruguay - were found guilty by a jury in the High Court at Hamilton on charges of conspiring to import and conspiring to export cocaine.
In 2005, police tapped the men's phonelines, listening into calls to the group's drug supplier in Uruguay, and a potential buyer for the drugs in Australia.
The group planned to bring 10kg of cocaine into New Zealand, impregnated in clothing, before extracting the drug using chemicals including ether, acetone and hydrochloric and sulphuric acid.
Most of the drug would then be sent on to Australia.
However, the plan crumbled after the group was unable to source the ether it needed.
Crown prosecutor Philip Crayton yesterday described the plan as "drug dealing at the top level" and said it was important to deter others from trying a similar scheme.
But a lawyer for one of the men said the plot was never any more than talk.
"Realistically, this never was going to happen," Gavin Boot, representing Roberto Pissano Briaturi, said.
- NZPA
