Ten people arrested, $5 million of drugs seized in Operation Mystic. Video / Auckland City District Police
A desire to protect her family from retribution and financial worries drove an unassuming rural woman to become a pawn in an international drug syndicate, a jury has heard.
The trial of alleged expatriate drug kingpin Xavier Valent, aka Harry Whitehead, continued in the Auckland High Court on Monday morning.
The Crown says Valent, 34, was the mastermind of a cartel that imported tonnes of meth, MDMA, ephedrine and cocaine into New Zealand, earning millions as he pulled the strings from overseas after fleeing the country amid a Customs investigation in 2016.
He was arrested on an Interpol warrant at the Italian border in 2020 and extradited to New Zealand.
Prosecutors called the first of five co-operating witnesses the Crown alleges were former accomplices of Valent.
Most were granted reduced sentences in exchange for co-operation and all have name suppression.
Valent is representing himself supported by two lawyers appointed as amicus curiae to assist him - Nicholas Leader and Sumudu Thode.
Xavier Valent enters the dock on the first day of his trial at the Auckland High Court. Photo / Michael Craig
He has pleaded not guilty to more than 100 charges covering the importation, manufacture, possession and supply of drugs and is standing trial alongside Terrique Treasurer, allegedly a key lieutenant in the operation.
Valent’s defence hinges on identity. He will say the Crown cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt he was the drug lord identified in police and Customs investigations.
On Friday, the Crown called as a witness a Customs officer who undertook covert surveillance on properties in rural Auckland the prosecution says were receiving packages of concealed drugs ordered by Valent in 2016.
One of the subjects of that surveillance was an older woman who gave evidence on Monday remotely via audio-visual link.
She was sentenced to prison for helping co-ordinate the arrival of packages containing methamphetamine precursor drug ephedrine into New Zealand.
Crown prosecutor Fiona Culliney said the woman’s son met the defendant when Valent was imprisoned over a decade ago for dealing LSD, MDMA and cocaine.
The woman said her son had been engaged in providing addresses for international drug parcel deliveries that came through Auckland International Airport but was jailed.
She picked up where he left off, the jury heard.
“I sort of knew [my son] was doing something, and because he had sort of gone on about addresses and everything. I was kind of quite paranoid him not finishing off what he was supposed to have done. A bit fearful,” she said.
The woman used a cell phone her son had left behind to ring a man she only ever knew as “Fokus”, which the Crown says is one of Valent’s main aliases.
When she started she didn’t even know exactly what key meth precursor chemical ephedrine was.
If courier tracking showed one of the packages had arrived successfully, she would go around to one of the addresses her or her sons had provided, pick it up, carefully unpack the ephedrine then deliver it to Fokus.
Many were seized at the airport but some got through, she said.
Upon delivery, Fokus would give her up to $10,000, she said.
“He’d just take the package and give us a wad of cash and off we go. Two minutes and we’re gone.
“We were supposed to use a new phone and a new sim card for every delivery. I didn’t really want to do any of that so I kind of avoided all of that.”
The woman admitted the money played a large part in her not stopping sooner because she was experiencing financial problems.
She testified she was also asked by Fokus to go to the North Shore to buy money-counting machines and to help him rent a storage locker.
At one stage, she said was asked to go to a bank branch in Auckland to pay for an overweight parcel, a decision she viewed as foolish because she would have to provide identification. At this point a different side to Fokus’ personality emerged, she said.
“He got quite nasty because I didn’t want to do it. I thought it was quite stupid for me to do it.
He also asked her to go to a Western Union branch to wire money offshore, she said.
“Fokus needed money to go overseas for some reason.”
After a few months, Fokus visited her at her home in a rural area of Auckland in October 2016, when she said she told him she was getting out of the game.
“That was the day I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore.
“He could burn the house, break my legs, I didn’t care, I just wasn’t doing it any more.”
The woman was arrested the following month, when Customs executed a search warrant at her home.
She co-operated with investigators from the start.
The Crown says she identified Fokus’ property in central Auckland as the same property linked to Valent, and identified Fokus as Valent from a photo montage.
By the time of her arrest Valent had already fled the country, the Crown alleges.
Through a lengthy cross-examination, Leader, one of the lawyers assisting Valent, portrayed the woman as an unreliable narrator.
He had her admit to providing inaccurate information to Customs officers and lying to her friends to use the address as a drug drop-off point.
Leader also alleged she met Fokus earlier and more frequently than she claimed in her testimony, namely at an apartment in central Auckland where her son was staying after his release from prison.
Valent occasionally passed notes from the dock to the lawyers.
Leader asked the witness if she had spoken with Fokus about the cryptocurrency bitcoin at the apartment.
His cross-examination culminated in a question alleging Fokus was helping her in the bitcoin trade, not the drug game, a suggestion strongly rejected by the witness.
“It wasn’t this man called Fokus that was giving you money to perform these tasks, it was you taking the money to Fokus so it could be changed into bitcoin, wasn’t it?” Leader said.
“You’re joking! This is the first I’ve heard of this bitcoin stuff,” the witness said.
“Sorry, you’re barking up the wrong tree on that one.”
