P accused 'only cooked once'

File photo / Claire De Barr

One of the two Tauranga men on trial accused of manufacturing $2.3m of P, claims it was impossible to have done so given the chemicals and equipment he had access to and the cooking method he used.

P-cook Wallace Scott Bramley, 38, who was giving evidence in the High Court at Rotorua yesterday, insisted he had only manufactured methamphetamine once between March 2 and 9, 2010 which was on March 7, during which he produced approximately 1kg.

During questioning by his lawyer Paul Mabey, QC, Bramley said he had been the partner and P-cook in his and his co-accused Royce Allan Duncan's drug dealing business.

Duncan, 49, from Omanawa, and Bramley had earlier been convicted of a raft of P manufacturing charges, including the March 7, 2010 cook up.

Bramley described his production method to the jury and the amounts of psuedoephedrine hydrochloride he obtained during the extraction phase of the March 7 cook up.

Under cross examination by the prosecutor, Bramley insisted he had never cooked up 2.35kg of methamphetamine in his life.

Bramley said the rate of methamphetamine production during that cook up was a gram a minute, and on that basis the amount of P the Crown claimed he was capable of producing on March 2-3, 2010 was "impossible", it would have taken almost 40 hours.

On March 4, 2010 he was in Auckland with $115,000 trying to buy some more Contac NT to be used for a cook up, he said.

Bramley insisted a text message reference to 2350 he and Duncan had discussed in the days leading up to March 7 was the quantity of hypophosphorous acid he needed to complete the cooking process that day, not the amount of P he had produced.

Former policeman and real estate agent Nigel David Walker, 47, who is also on trial, has denied conspiring with Duncan to money launder some of Duncan's drug dealing proceeds.

The trial continues today.