KEY POINTS:
Three Uruguayan men yesterday started lengthy jail terms for the unsuccessful 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 sentenced to nine years in jail, and 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 were found guilty by a jury in the High Court at Hamilton on charges of conspiring to import and export cocaine.
In 2005, police tapped the men's phone lines, listening in to calls to the group's drug supplier in Uruguay and to a potential buyer 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 obtain the ether it needed.
Crown prosecutor Philip Crayton on Wednesday described the plan as "drug dealing at the top level" and said it was important to deter others from trying a similar scheme.
But lawyer Gavin Boot, representing Briaturi, said the plot was never any more than talk.
"Realistically, this never was going to happen."
- NZPA
