Sui Jun Zhou (second from far right) has lost an appeal against his jail sentence. Photo / Kurt Bayer
Sui Jun Zhou (second from far right) has lost an appeal against his jail sentence. Photo / Kurt Bayer
A major player in a Christchurch synthetic cannabis ring has failed in his legal bid to stop the Commissioner of Police from recovering more than $2 million of his ill-gotten gains.
Sui Jun Zhou, a real estate agent in his 30s, was jailed for 26 months in 2019 for his role in a synthetic drug dealing venture that operated out of the small Sockburn Dairy in Christchurch and at one point spanned the South Island.
Prosecutors said Zhou was the “right-hand man” or lieutenant of an operation masterminded by Fei He, who owned the dairy.
When police terminated their lengthy investigation in 2016, three years after the trade in synthetic cannabis was outlawed, they found 173 kilograms of the substance in the possession of Zhou and others.
He pleaded guilty to one charge of selling or supplying non-approved psychoactive substances and two charges of possession or supply of non-approved psychoactive substances.
Police calculated he had obtained $2,214,000 in unlawful benefit and Justice Jan‑Marie Doogue found the Commissioner of Police was entitled to recover that amount under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act from Zhou and his business, Levonz Investment Limited.
Zhou’s appeal against Justice Doogue’s ruling was heard by the Court of Appeal on March 27, and the court released its reasons for rejecting the appeal in a judgment delivered by Justice David Collins on May 2.
His lawyers challenged the final calculation of his ill-gotten gains, arguing the price per gram used did not take into account wholesale customers and that some of the profit derived from the sale of a legal substance in conjunction with the synthetic cannabis.
This was rejected by the Court of Appeal, which found the judge was entitled to accept the calculations by the detective. Justice Collins said other arguments were inconsistent with the fact he pleaded guilty to hundreds of sales of synthetic cannabis.
The Sockburn Dairy in Christchurch was raided in May 2016 by police. Photo / Kurt Bayer
The legal team also argued the Commissioner unreasonably recovered twice from the benefit received by Zhou and He, who was subject to a $3.5m profit forfeiture order. This argument was thrown out by the Court of Appeal because it found Zhou did not prove he and He were jointly benefiting from the offending.
Zhou’s third and final argument, that Justice Doogue failed to properly assess his claim that he would suffer undue hardship unless all his real estate property was excluded from the order, also did not gain any traction with the Court of Appeal.
“Mr Zhou did not raise any matters which went beyond the hardship that most people would suffer if they had their property confiscated under the Act,” Justice Collins said.
The Court dismissed the appeal and found the Commissioner of Police, as the respondent, was entitled to costs.
