Was Xavier Valent the expatriate mastermind of one of New Zealand’s largest drug syndicates? Or has the former Auckland Grammar boy been wrongly identified as the cartel’s Mr Big? George Block reports on the first two weeks of an extraordinary drug trial.
An Auckland woman has described making up to 18 drug deliveries per day, some by e-scooter, at the behest of a mysterious figure who communicated from offshore via an encrypted messaging application.
Her evidence capped the second week of the High Court trial of Xavier Valent, formerly Harry Whitehead, a former pupil of Auckland Grammar who faces life in prison if convicted.
The 34-year-old denies more than 100 charges covering the importation, supply and manufacture of methamphetamine, cocaine, ephedrine and MDMA.
He was extradited in 2020 after he was picked up at the Italian border on an Interpol warrant after a massive police investigation.
Valent is standing trial alongside Terrique Treasurer, accused of being a key lieutenant in his operation for a time.
Crown prosecutor Fiona Culliney says Valent was a relatively small-time dealer when he was first imprisoned over a decade ago. But he started a larger syndicate dealing in a slew of Class A and B drugs with the help of a friend he made in prison after his release around 2015, prosecutors allege.
The Crown case is that he fled overseas as Customs investigators closed in on his nascent operation in 2016.
He continued to build his drug empire while living a jet-set lifestyle overseas, sending orders to his minions in New Zealand via encrypted messaging apps, prosecutors claim.
At one stage, he sent a postcard from the Maldives signed “Don” promising similar luxury and riches to one of the workers in the syndicate, the Crown alleges.
However, a drug syndicate is only as strong as its weakest links - and Valent’s alleged operation had its share of weak links.
Drug mules turned co-operating witnesses after their arrest following a fire at a central Auckland apartment used as a meth den, the jury heard.
Meanwhile, investigators led by veteran drug squad cop Detective Sergeant John Sowter and fellow National Organised Crime Group Detective Sergeant Angela Waugh used covert searches, wiretaps and electronic analysis of seized phones to amass screeds of evidence as part of what was dubbed Operation Mystic.
The Crown is only part-way through its case in the marathon trial, set down for six weeks.
But the trial has already had moments of drama and levity, including a detective reading the lyrics to a track by late American rapper Notorious B.I.G. setting out rules for drug dealing.
While the defence has yet to begin its case, its arguments are beginning to coalesce for the jury via the cross-examination of witnesses. It has so far focused on undermining the credibility of the Crown’s witnesses.
Valent’s defence will be that the Crown cannot prove to the required standard that he was the man behind messages sent under different aliases to workers in the syndicate.
He is representing himself, but lawyers appointed amicus curiae to assist him - Sumudu Thode and Nicholas Leader - are cross-examining witnesses at this stage.
Valent passes notes to the lawyers as he listens intently and follows the thousands of pages of evidence provided in several bulging folders.
He controversially lost a bid to have his hair cut by a hairdresser in prison ahead of his trial after Corrections said it represented a security risk, and is wearing his hair in a ponytail.
Thode has provided the most colourful moment of the trial so far.
The jury had heard messages obtained by police sent via the encrypted application Wickr where a worker in the syndicate was admonished for not pulling his weight and repeatedly reprimanded for his poor performance.
In the messages between a person with the username “Pacific Trading” - the Crown contends this was one of Valent’s many aliases - and the worker, Pacific Trading cites the rules for drug dealing set out in Notorious B.I.G.’s Ten Crack Commandments.
The prosecutor alleges Valent requested his workers follow the crack commandments. In the context of the track, “crack” referred to crack cocaine, but in New Zealand, it has come to refer to meth as well.
“Do you even listen to the 10 crack commandments, you’re uncontrollable bro,” Pacific Trading said in a message.
Pacific’s concerns were well placed.
The worker was pulled over for driving with no front bumper in 2019 and found with 120 grams of meth and nearly $50,000.
During her cross-examination of Sowter, Thode asked the detective about the commandments.
“In your experience in these 10 commandments, is it something that’s well-known by people that you have dealt with?” Thode asked.
“Well, certainly reading them it’s good tradecraft, yes,” Sowter said.
The lawyer and detective then traversed all 10 commandments after Thode produced the lyrics.
The jury heard rules for drug dealing, including “never get high on your own supply” and “never sell no crack where you rest at”.
Key to the Crown case is a number of “co-operating witnesses” - former workers in the syndicate granted immunity from prosecution on certain charges in exchange for co-operation.
Most also received lighter sentences for helping investigators.
Their identities cannot be reported as all have been granted name suppression. They are giving evidence remotely via audio-visual link.
One, an older rural woman, who said she became involved in the syndicate to protect her family from retribution after her son was jailed and could no longer carry out orders.
Her son had been providing addresses for drug parcel deliveries that came through Auckland International Airport, and she picked up where he left off.
The woman used a cellphone her son had left to ring a man she only ever knew as “Fokus”, which the Crown says is one of Valent’s main aliases.
The woman said she went to his home in central Auckland where he gave her a phone with an encrypted messaging app installed.
If courier tracking showed one of the packages had arrived, she would go to one of the addresses she or her sons had provided, pick it up, carefully unpack the ephedrine and deliver it to Fokus.
Upon delivery, Fokus would give her up to $10,000, she said.
After a few months, Fokus visited her at her home in October 2016, when she said she told him she was getting out of the game.
“He could burn the house, break my legs, I didn’t care. I just wasn’t doing it anymore.”
The woman was arrested the following month when Customs searched her home.
She co-operated with investigators from the start.
The Crown says she identified Fokus’ property in central Auckland as the same property linked to Valent, and identified Valent as Fokus from a photo montage.
By the time of her arrest Valent had already fled the country, the Crown alleges.
Through a lengthy cross-examination, Leader portrayed the woman as an unreliable narrator.
He had her admit to providing inaccurate information to Customs officers and lying to her friends to use their address as a drug drop-off point.
His cross-examination culminated in a question alleging Fokus was helping her in the bitcoin trade, not the drug game, a suggestion emphatically rejected by the witness.
The second Crown witness was a woman who became embroiled in the syndicate via a friend of her husband.
She was a methamphetamine addict in financial strife who had lost custody of her child.
The woman described receiving a list of orders on her phone from a person going by the name Global Trading, but who would also respond to “Harry”, Valent’s former name.
Her orders amounted to a list of instructions of where to deliver which drugs and how much cash to pick up.
“How many deliveries were you doing for Global Trading per day?” asked prosecutor Culliney.
“A lot. A lot of kilos,” she said.
”At one point in time, we were doing 18 deliveries in one day. And it was seven days a week.”
She would use an e-scooter to make some of the deliveries, the jury heard.
Her downfall began with a fire at a central Auckland apartment she and her husband used to prepare methamphetamine for sale.
Knowing police would discover how the apartment was used, they went on the run. During their two weeks on the lam, they talked to a lawyer.
The woman said they agreed to be completely honest with investigators.
However, during cross-examination, Leader suggested they conspired to fabricate a version of events to best advantage them while throwing Global Trading under the bus.
“We didn’t fabricate, no, we chose to be honest,” the witness said.
Leader also had her admit that at one point, she believed Fokus and Global Trading were different people, scoring a point in favour of the defence’s identity argument.
The trial continues tomorrow.
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