Jonathan Seal, left, Michael Harrison Cooper, and Auckland freight worker Simote Vea were jailed at the High Court in Christchurch today after a massive meth bust. Photo / Pool
Jonathan Seal, left, Michael Harrison Cooper, and Auckland freight worker Simote Vea were jailed at the High Court in Christchurch today after a massive meth bust. Photo / Pool
Three men caught smuggling nearly 40kg of methamphetamine worth $24 million from Mexico, in what was the South Island's biggest-ever P bust, have today each been jailed for at least 12 years.
Jonathan Seal, 27, Michael Harrison Cooper, 33, and Auckland freight worker Simote Vea, 38, were arrested after a joint police and customs Operation Grandeur investigation.
Drugs hidden in a shipment of safety lights landed at Christchurch International Airport from Mexico on November 1, 2017.
Officers found 20 separate boxes, each with 1.1-1.2kg of 80 per cent pure methamphetamine, totalling 39.7kg.
Search warrants were executed at a number of addresses in Christchurch and in Auckland after a two-week joint police and Customs operation.
Drugs hidden in a shipment of safety lights landed at Christchurch International Airport from Mexico on November 1, 2017. Photo / Supplied
Today at the High Court in Christchurch, the trio received hefty jail sentences for their roles in the drug smuggling – with father-of-four Vea sentenced to 15 years and seven months imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of seven-and-a-half years, and Seal and Cooper each jailed for 12 years and four months, with no minimum non-parole periods.
Seal and Cooper gave vague and unverifiable stories over how they got wrapped-up in the drugs bust.
The Christchurch pair both earlier admitted one charge of importing the Class A controlled drug methamphetamine.
Their lawyers said they had been naïve young men who had supposedly met a man in a bar who proposed a business venture – something about building a new carpark.
But Justice Gerald Nation doubted the validity of their claims.
They communicated with burner phones. Importation documents were signed, duty and GST payments were made. Seal chased up the freight company.
After police and Customs officers secretly swooped on the package, they took out most of the meth around the safety lights and replaced it with a substitute substance. The consignment was then duly delivered.
Seal went to the delivery address and took a box home.
Soon after, Cooper and an associate showed up at his house and took away the lights with the meth substitute.
That's when police and Customs swooped.
During a raid at Cooper's house, he tried to flush the product in his bathroom, the court heard. They were both arrested.
Vea was found guilty by a jury earlier this year of importing meth on three occasions in November 2017, including two shipments from Canada where the drugs were tucked away in LED panels and karaoke electronics.
The Auckland customs brokerage manager for a freight firm abused his position of trust, Justice Nation said, as a trusted and valued employee who'd been earning $145,000 a year.
The judge found that the men had been more than "catchers" and had likely got involved for financial reasons.
None of the trio identified anyone "further up the food chain", the court heard.
As Justice Nation imposed the lengthy prison sentences today, he told the three men in the dock: "You are all young enough to make something of your lives after you are released from prison and in some way compensate for the offending that you became involved in with these importations. That is what the community will want to say from all of you."
