Drug importer gets date for deportation appeal hearing
An appeal by convicted drug smuggler Karel Sroubek against his deportation will be heard in July.
The Immigration and Protection Tribunal will decide if the kickboxer, who came into the country 18 years ago under an assumed name, will be sent back to the Czech Republic.
Sroubek, who was released on parole in September, came to prominence when he was granted residence by former immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway instead of being deported.
But the minister reversed his decision, issuing a new deportation liability notice, claiming Sroubek never met the minimum statutory bar to enter New Zealand in the first place.
His deportation appeal will be heard in Auckland, in a hearing that is expected to take up to five days.
Sroubek told the Parole Board in August that he still feared for his safety if he was deported to his country of birth, where he said he witnessed a murder.
Customs tipped off Immigration NZ six years ago that despite that fear Sroubek returned to the Czech Republic in 2009. That information never made it into the file LeesGalloway read to make his initial decision in 2018.
A review of the case found the immigration file summary did not make it clear he was an excluded person and was granted a visa as a result of an administrative error, the grounds for the current deportation Sroubek now faces. When he arrived in New Zealand under the name of Jan Antolik in 2003, he was wanted by Czech authorities as he had not served a 41⁄2-year jail term for attacking two police officers and a taxi driver.
He gained New Zealand residence in 2008, and was cleared of charges of kidnapping and aggravated robbery a year later.
In his 2011 immigration trial for using a false passport, Sroubek explained why he fled his home country, alleging corrupt Czech police were forcing him to make a false statement in relation to a murder he witnessed and threatening to charge him if he did not.
Concern about what would happen to him if he was deported prompted the trial judge to discharge him without conviction.
A further conviction in New Zealand was quashed on appeal but in 2016 he was found guilty of importing drugs which – together with the lies he had told immigration – led to him facing the first deportation liability.
Sroubek, who told the Parole Board he had job offers on his release, served 41⁄2 years of an almost six-year sentence for importing almost 5 kilograms of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy. –