Surgeon made $25,000 an hour from pills

Xiao-Zhong Chen

An Auckland heart surgeon made $25,000 an hour during the nine months he sold 220,000 Telfast tablets - enough pills to make up to $13 million worth of methamphetamine.

Xiao-Zhong Chen paid $12 for each box of Telfast, telling his wholesale supplier the tablets were going to be exported to a pharmaceutical company in China.

He then onsold them to 22-year-old student Hao Yang for $25 a box.

During his trial in the Auckland District Court this week a jury will be asked to decide if Chen really believed the tablets were destined for China.

The Crown claims they were instead destined for the manufacture of the drug P and that the 54-year-old would have known this as his estimated $25,000-an-hour profit margins were too good to be legal.

In the opening address yesterday, Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis said Chen contacted Auckland pharmaceutical company Aventis Pharmac in July 2003 wanting to buy a large number of Telfast decongestant tablets.

He told business manager Andrew Baker he was looking to buy the tablets on behalf of a pharmacist friend in China.

Concerned by the size of the order, Mr Baker contacted police.

He stalled Chen while police investigated but the sale eventually proceeded, although it went through Anspec, a company which had a licence to export the tablets.

Between November 2003 and August 2004 Chen made eight purchases from Anspec, the quantities varying from 300 to 5200 packets.

Each time the surgeon paid for the tablets in cash and arrived to collect them in a different rental car.

After collecting the pills Chen would sell them to Yang, who could sell them on the blackmarket for around $100 a box.

Detective Sergeant John Sowter, from the Auckland drug squad, said Telfast was one of about 50 pharmacy products that contained pseudoephedrine, the vital ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

"For that reason there is a good black market available for these products."

Chen onsold 22,000 packets of Telfast which had enough pseudoephedrine to make 13.2kg of methamphetamine.

That much methamphetamine had a street value of between $7 million and $13 million.

Ms Lummis said Chen, Yang and two others were arrested after police followed the surgeon one day after he had bought 2000 boxes of Telfast.

Chen drove to Auckland City Hospital and gave the rental car and tablets to Yang and another associate, Weikun Jin.

Police then followed Yang and Jin to a house, where they executed a search warrant.

Yang and Jin were released on bail after a court appearance but have both since skipped the country.

Ms Lummis said Chen told police after his arrest he thought that what he was doing was legal and that the drugs were being exported to China.

He said he had witnessed documents, such as shipping orders, that supported that notion.

The Crown says those documents were false and Chen would have known that if he had bothered to check. "The Crown says Dr Chen was closing his eyes from the reality of the situation ... because he knew what he was doing was dodgy," Ms Lummis said.

Defence lawyer Paul Davison, QC, told the jury there was no disputing the fact that Chen bought and onsold the tablets.

"The defence is that he did not know this product was going to be used ... or converted into a controlled drug, namely P."

The trial is expected to last a week.

Chen worked at Green Lane Hospital during the alleged offending.


The charges

* Chen faces seven charges of supplying a precursor substance - pseudoephedrine - for the manufacture of a controlled drug between Nov 20, 2003, and Aug 30, 2004.
* The plea: Not guilty.