$250m in real estate seized over 5 years

POLICE have seized $250 million in real estate assets from suspected criminals in just five years.

The property seizure crackdown targets organised crime and stripping gangs of luxury homes as well as boats, jewellery, cash and highperformance vehicles.

The Herald can also reveal real estate agents have reported 170 suspicious transactions under new antimoney laundering laws, which came into force in January last year, 28 of which were tagged 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 $250 million.

The properties were worth an average of $762,195 each — about $120,000 more than New Zealand’s median house price.

Police financial intelligence unit manager Detective Inspector Christiaan Barnard told the Herald the five largest real estate seizures last year were worth a combined $22.16 million.

They included rural and residential property and the seizures were associated with drug and moneylaundering crimes.

Meanwhile, more than $100 million in total assets was seized from criminals in the past year alone — a 65% jump on the previous year.

This involved nearly 500 individual assets, including bank accounts, real estate, cash, vehicles, ecurrency and jewellery.

Police said about 80% of all restrained assets stemmed from drugs and gangs, and it was not unusual for detectives to find large sums of cash hidden under beds, inside walls or buried underground.

Det Insp Barnard said the largest asset recovery operation last year netted nearly $18 million in seized bank accounts as part of a major moneylaundering enterprise.

The top four asset restraint operations all involved money laundering, seized assets totalling $41.7 million and including cash, bank accounts, motor vehicles, virtual assets and residential and commercial property.

Fraud operations were the next most lucrative, four seizures restraining $23.41 million in property, cars, boats and bank accounts.

Meanwhile a methamphetamine operation restrained $4.46 million in assets, including 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.’’

The Herald reported in February police were using the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to seize millions of dollars in assets from a South Auckland business owner because of health and safety breaches that resulted in a worker’s death.

Ron Salter has already served home detention for the death of Jamey Lee Bowring (24), at the Salters Cartage Ltd yard in Wiri.

But he now risks losing everything after police legally restrained his family home, along with family trusts, a crib and a waste fuel business

The police action against Salter is unprecedented, having usually been associated with drug offending and organised crime.

In April last year police seized about $4 million in assets during raids on Comancheros gang properties in Auckland.

The haul included several luxury Range Rovers, a RollsRoyce Wraith and two HarleyDavidson motorcycles.

Police also restrained the family home of Auckland lawyer Andrew Simpson, who was jailed for laundering million of dollars for the drugimporting criminal enterprise, and a $1.6 million Bucklands Beach home where the gang’s New Zealand chapter president Pasilika Naufahu was living. — The New Zealand Herald