$250m seized in gang crackdown
Real estate agents report 170 suspicious transactions
Police have seized $250 million in real estate assets from suspected criminals in just five years. The property seizure crackdown is targeted at organised crime and stripping gangs of luxury homes as well as high performance vehicles, boats, jewellery and cash.
The Herald can also reveal that real estate agents have reported 170 suspicious transactions under new antimoney laundering laws which came into force in January last year — with 28 of them escalated by police for further investigation.
Figures released under the Official Information Act show police asset recovery units have restrained 328 individual properties since 2015 under asset seizure laws.
The combined value of the restrained real estate was $250m. The properties were worth an average of $762,195 each.
Police Financial Intelligence Unit manager Detective Inspector Christiaan Barnard said the five largest real estate seizures last year were worth a combined $22.16m.
They included rural and residential property and the seizures were associated with drug and money laundering crimes.
Meanwhile, more than $100m in total assets was seized from criminals in the past year alone — a 65 per cent jump on the previous year.
This involved nearly 500 individual assets, including bank accounts, real estate, cash, vehicles, e-currency and jewellery.
Police say about 80 per cent of all restrained assets stem from drugs and gangs, and it’s not unusual to find large sums of cash hidden under beds, inside walls or buried.
Barnard said the largest asset recovery operation last year netted nearly $18m in seized bank accounts as part of a major money laundering enterprise.
The top four asset restraint operations all involved money laundering with seized assets totalling $41.7m, including cash, bank accounts, vehicles, virtual assets and residential and commercial property.
Fraud operations were the next most lucrative, with four seizures restraining $23.41m in property, cars, boats and bank accounts.
Organised crime is all about the money.
Former Police Commissioner Mike Bush
Meanwhile a methamphetamine operation restrained $4.46m in assets which included jewellery and precious metals.
Earlier this year, then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush said organised crime was “all about the money”.
“We’re intensifying our focus on the proceeds of that crime as part of our strategy to combat it.
“By focusing on the proceeds, we deprive criminals of their assets and therefore their influence.”
In April last year police seized about $4m in assets during raids on Comancheros gang properties in Auckland.
The haul included several luxury Range Rovers, a RollsRoyce Wraith, two HarleyDavidson motorcycles, a $10,000 gold chain and a $13,000 Louis Vuitton bag.
Police also restrained the family home of Auckland lawyer Andrew Simpson, jailed for laundering million of dollars for the drug-importing criminal enterprise, and a $1.6m Bucklands Beach home where the gang’s New Zealand chapter president Pasilika Naufahu was living.
And in January the search of a Feilding property revealed a sophisticated cultivation operation with more than 1100 cannabis plants.
Two people were arrested and the property, valued at $1.6m, was restrained along with $840,000 cash, vehicles and farm-related equipment.
Since January last year real estate agents have been required to report suspicious activity to the police financial crime unit under tough new anti-money laundering laws.
Agents reported 144 suspicious activity incidents during 2019 worth $290,000, 18 suspicious transactions worth $2.63m and eight suspicious international fund transfers totalling nearly $190,000.