WELLINGTON: When a gaudy and glittering horse head statue arrived from Mexico last year, one Customs officer’s suspicions proved well placed.
His detective work led to New Zealand’s largest-ever seizure of cocaine as 35kg of the drug worth $14 million was pulled from inside the sculpture.
It also led to American Ronald Cook Senior, 56, and 44-year-old Augustin Suarez- Juarez of Mexico on Wednesday being found guilty by a High Court at Auckland jury of possessing and attempting to supply the cocaine.
The pair had visited New Zealand in May and June 2016, first to extract the cocaine and second to supply it, Crown Prosecutor David Stevens said during their trial.
But instead they walked straight into a high-tech trap set by Customs and police.
It began in May 2016 when Customs carefully repacked the horse head statue with 34 identical-looking packages containing flour and one containing polystyrene, a tracking device and six grams of cocaine.
They then sent the head on its way.
When Cook and Suarez-Juarez arrived in the country, police had the men bugged and under surveillance as they cut into the sculpture and extracted the packages before taking five to the Crowne Plaza Auckland hotel to meet an alleged buyer, named Henry Anchondo.
When the trio then broke open the package containing the tracking device, they panicked. Anchondo got away, but Cook and Suarez-Juarez were arrested at the airport trying to flee to Los Angeles.
Both men said during their High Court trial they believed the horse head contained cash, not drugs.
The money was to be laundered and made “clean” before Cook and Suarez-Juarez used it to set up businesses trading in paint, they said.
Their lawyers pointed out there was no evidence or recording showing the men had laid eyes on the cocaine or ever been told it was in the statue despite being under constant surveillance.
Cook’s lawyer, Sam Wimsett, said his client was a just simple family man and junior member of the crime syndicate, who was not told about the cocaine because this reduced the risk of it being stolen or detected by police.
“You certainly don’t share that [information] with a travelling salesman, father of six, insane body-surfer from Hawaii when that is a risk that doesn’t need to be taken,” he said.
But Stevens called the men’s claims “lies”, a “sham”, and “absurd” and desperate attempts to evade conviction.
He said their well-planned actions made it clear they knew the sculpture contained an illegal drug.
This included their questions to their bosses about whether Anchondo was supposed to pay them for the packages they were delivering and their fear for their personal safety while making the delivery.
“They were not on holiday. They were not in New Zealand on any legitimate business,” Stevens said.
The trial jury agreed. After almost three days of deliberations, the eleven member jury unanimously found Suarez-Juarez guilty, while Cook was found guilty by a majority of 10-to-1.
Both men will be sentenced on July 21.
