The $45m Colombian cocaine racket that infiltrated New Zealand
Tuesday, 7 May 2024
On a mid-autumn afternoon, a woman in a white SUV drives through central Auckland to meet an associate.
She arrives at the agreed location and hands over a pink Versace box with $102,500 of cash inside.
In return, she is given a $5 banknote with a distinct serial number on it - a prior agreed token that acts as a receipt, to confirm the money has changed hands.
The woman takes the note and writes “100K” on it. She then leaves and takes a photo, to act as proof of the drop arranged by Esteban Blanco-Gaviria, who has links to a drugs cartel in Medellin, Colombia - a city famous for Pablo Escobar and the once notorious Medellin Cartel.
This was routine for three years among a group of Colombians who worked mostly as farmers in Canterbury but spent their spare time dealing cocaine up and down New Zealand - an estimated $45 million worth in total.
But this time, in central Auckland, the person the woman in the white SUV met was an undercover cop.
That was in 2021. But the story of the Colombian cartel-linked smugglers began long before.
Blanco-Gaviria arrived from Santiago, Chile, in March 2013 on a three-month student visa. His intentions in New Zealand initially had nothing to do with drug smuggling. He could be seen posing on social media at popular South Island tourist spots.
Between 2016 and 2018, six more South Americans - five from Colombia and one from Argentina - began working on Canterbury farms on work visas with the intention of creating a centralised base to supply cocaine throughout the country.
There were no fast cars and flashy lifestyles. They got up early, milked cows and fed pigs. They lived in modest accommodation on the farms where they worked.
Blanco-Gaviria was later recruited to launder money back to the cartel with the help of his father, who lived in Medellin.
Felipe Montoya-Ospina worked on a large dairy farm in Hororata. His co-workers said he lived like an ordinary, reliable farmworker, and was responsible and trustworthy.
In January 2018, Montoya-Ospina facilitated the first known importation of cocaine made by the group. He organised for the sender in Bogota, Colombia, to conceal the drugs in a package labelled “Rios De Lujo Moto” (translated as ‘motorcycle parts’).
The package, sent by air, was to be delivered to a fake name at a Darfield address.
But alarm bells were ringing. The kilogram of cocaine had been intercepted in Australia.
Over the next year the smugglers made four more known imports. Two came from São Paolo, Brazil, one was from Santiago, Chile, and another from Miami, Florida.
The relatively small amounts - a handful of kilograms each - were well concealed in hollow steel pipes, tent poles and cylinders.
The group used false names and alternated the methods of delivery, modes of import and product descriptions.
They frequently changed the origin of packages and transport routes as they became aware that authorities scrutinised packages from certain countries more than others.
Some of the packages made it through undetected. Others weren’t as successful.
As authorities around the world began investigating the flagged packages in 2020, the farm-working, drug-smuggling cohort kept busy.
They continued to import cocaine into New Zealand and launder money under the farm worker guise. But their luck was running out.
Local police started intercepting messages between them on encrypted apps like Signal and Wickr.
In April 2021, Montoya-Ospina took an InterCity bus from Christchurch to Auckland carrying a reusable Countdown shopping bag with cocaine inside. He met an associate and the pair delivered the bag to a local dealer four days later.
They repeated the trips at least twice more. Three months later, the same trio met again and over $100,000 in cash was handed over by the dealer.
Authorities became aware of several other meetings, mostly in Canterbury, in which cocaine and cash were often exchanged.
They established that the group often got external players to launder money for them.
Shortly after, drug enforcement agents from the US posing as money launderers, based in Colombia, picked up the contract to launder money for the syndicate.
That same April was when the woman in the white SUV - Elida Escorcia-Marin - handed over the $102,500 in the pink Versace box to the undercover cop. She was an associate of the group and a partner of one of its leading members.
Two months later, the group handed over $114,000 in cash to a known Auckland-based money launderer. Police were watching.
That August, they tried to smuggle in their largest attempted import - over 23kg of cocaine, worth about $10m - in a shipping container.
It was destined for a rural address in Canterbury, but was intercepted in Spain.
Two months after that, Blanco-Gaviria and an associate inadvertently gave an undercover cop $100,000 in cash, believing they were a money launderer.
He met the same associate and another undercover detective the following month in a hotel room in central Christchurch, handing over $200,000 in four $50,000 stacks wrapped in plastic.
The smugglers had no idea how closely they were being watched until it was too late.
Police raided homes in Christchurch, rural Canterbury and Auckland in November 2021.
They found nearly $100,000 stuffed into roof spaces. Cell phones covered in tin foil to prevent police surveillance lay beside piles of passports and driver’s licences. Tracking numbers tied to known cocaine imports were found written in notepads.
At Montoya-Ospina’s Hororata farmhouse, a portable red toolbox workstation in his bedroom had a vice and drill bit used to dismantle blocks of cocaine, and acetone used to wash it. Snap-lock bags, scales and crushed paracetamol, used as a cutting agent, lay close.
Marked “tokens” used for money laundering and various Bitcoin and cryptocurrency contacts were also found.
The syndicate members were arrested and charged.
It didn’t take long for authorities to identify their various roles.
Blanco-Gaviria, 36, who worked on a dairy farm in Pendarves, was initially involved in the laundering of money back to the cartel. In early 2021 he incurred significant debt in Colombia, likely from a failed laundering attempt. He then became involved directly in imports, which he claimed arose out of a threat to his father in Medellin by the cartel.
Montoya-Ospina, 37, was a senior member of the group. He imported, broke down and washed cocaine and spread it around New Zealand, including to a gang in Auckland.
Anderson Pelaez-Garcia, 31, was found based in Southbridge. He was a leading member of the group involved in imports and money laundering.
David Bonilla-Casanas, 32, was based in Bishopdale, Christchurch, and was in charge of money laundering and forging documents to create false identities for the group. He was also involved in importing.
Ruth Ramirez-Alfonso, 40, a dairy worker in Lowcliffe, Mid Canterbury, and Maria Otero, 32, based in Rakaia, both engaged in several attempted imports.
The head of the operation was a 26-year-old man who based himself in Rangitata before moving to Darfield and then Hororata. He oversaw millions of dollars worth of imports and the laundering of over $1m in cash.
He cannot yet be named due to ongoing suppression orders.
Days before the arrests, 11kg of cocaine worth millions of dollars was sent in a shipping container via Hong Kong, destined for rural Canterbury.
It was already on its way by sea and the smugglers couldn’t stop it coming.
Once the cartel in Colombia learned of the arrests, the consignor requested the shipment be re-directed to an address in Auckland. It was intercepted by Customs.
The global investigation - codenamed Operation Mist - uncovered 53 cocaine consignments the syndicate tried to import into New Zealand.
Twenty-six were successful.
Seven were intercepted in New Zealand by Customs and 20 were stopped overseas.
It’s estimated the combination of successfully imported and intercepted packages totalled over 100kg of cocaine, with a street value of $45m.
It is also believed there were many successful importations of cocaine by the syndicate that were not identified by authorities. The belief is based on the millions of dollars that was laundered by senior members of the group.
Wastewater data matched with the quantity imported by the group showed they were responsible for the majority of the drug being sold in the country.
Operation Mist represents one of the most significant drug importation investigations in New Zealand history.
It involved the New Zealand police’s Organised Crime Group, Customs, and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with help from Spanish and Colombian police.
Police say the smugglers’ network and reach extends around the globe.
The Press can reveal these details for the first time after suppressions of the facts of the case were lifted on Monday, following the guilty plea of an associate of the group.
Members of the syndicate have pleaded guilty to dozens of class A drug importation and money laundering charges and will be sentenced on various dates this year.