Drug boss Kenny McMillan can't shake $2.6 million debt from his crimes
Thursday, 19 March 2026
A Wellington drug boss serving 18 years’ jail has failed to overturn a $2.6 million debt aimed at recovering the proceeds of crime.
Kenny Leslie McMillan threw bags of methamphetamine from the 11th floor balcony of his $900 a week penthouse apartment on Lambton Quay as police closed in, in early in 2019.
He had three quality cars, a launch berthed at the marina and he was wearing a $52,000 Hublot watch when he was arrested.
McMillan was the main Wellington-based target of a police investigation into the supply of methamphetamine in Wellington and Auckland, according to a recent Court of Appeal decision.
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Methamphetamine was delivered to Wellington in cars modified with hidden compartments for the purpose.
Packages of drugs were exchanged for cash in car parking buildings. The charges involved a total of 10.37kg of methamphetamine.
The $2.96m value of the drugs was the basis for the claimed unlawful benefit, the court said.
Police found assets valued about $330,000 — including $168,000 in cash or bank accounts — but McMillan was up against a law that took a broad view of unlawful benefits from criminal activity and it didn’t take into account expenses or outgoings of his drug business.
The rest of the property making up the $330,000 of assets included the proceeds of the sale of the boat, cars, gold rings, gold coins, a gold necklace, a Ralph Hotere lithograph and cryptocurrency mining equipment.
Tax records showed a declared income of $50,400.30 in the seven years up to March 2020.
McMillan, now 48, appealed against the profit forfeiture order made in the High Court on the grounds the judge should not have accepted the alleged value of the unlawful benefit and that the result was disproportionately harsh.
The Commissioner of Police takes civil court proceedings to set the amount that can be recovered as the proceeds of crime. If the value of assets doesn’t cover the amount the court has set, the balance is a civil debt that the Crown can recover.
The judge in the High Court said it was possible that McMillan had other undiscovered assets such as cryptocurrency.
McMillan did not give evidence to explain his finances, and that was his right, but he had also “made his own bed”, the High Court judge said.
For the Court of Appeal, McMillan swore an affidavit saying he did not give evidence about his finances because of the risk to his safety. But the court said that could have been said earlier and didn’t carry much weight in the proceeds of crime issues.
While the court shared the High Court judge’s scepticism that McMillan received $2.9m in the period the charges covered, it was for McMillan to point out why that figure was wrong.
“He has not done so,” the court said.
Another concern at the appeal was that if the criminal proceeds order was still hanging over McMillan when he was released from prison it could be enforced against honest earnings and assets, and the possibility of bankruptcy.
But the Court of Appeal said that type of hardship could only be assessed when it happened.