Steve Symon: Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on organised crime comments on the progress of Operation Matata

A prediction we haven't seen the last of a transnational crime syndicate operating out of Auckland airport.

Operation Matata's seen 43 arrests since February, including 20 border workers - allegedly involved with smuggling large quantities of meth and cocaine. 

It's thought the group were exploiting baggage handlers at the airport. 

Chair of the ministerial advisory group on organised crime Steve Symon told Heather du Plessis-Allan that authorities have done a fantastic job rooting out that many offenders. 

But he suspects either there are more, or if not, they'll be replaced like they were at the start of the year. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon, twenty baggage handlers at Auckland Airport have been
arrested in what authorities are calling a major breakthrough in
transnational drug operations. The drug operation is linked to gangs.
Eight members of the twenty eight Brotherhood MC gang, including
the president, have also been rounded up. Steve Simon is
the chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group for Organized Crime
in with us. Hi, Steve, this is what you warned about, isn't.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It It is it is. I feel like a fortune
teller at a school ground fair. We talked about this
back when we were first starting our reports in March,
that this would be a thing, and here we are.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Do you reckon twenty is everything?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
No? How big I think the police have done, Police
and Customs have done an incredible job to root out
that many. But I suspect either there are more or
if there's not, they will be replaced, much like they
were in the earlier stages of Matata where the police
did arrests and then they were those baggage handlers were

(01:01):
replaced by others. This is a problem not just for
New Zealand but other places in the world and is
kind of a scheme that is used by organized crime.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, so how does this actually work? Is it that
they when the twenty allegedly bad baggage handlers are taken out,
twenty more bad baggage handlers come in, or do good
baggage handlers come in? And then they're flipped on the job.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
A bit of everything. A big part of what organized
crime does is it looks for people and those vulnerable workforces.
So baggage handlers is an obvious one. You've got people
in those roles, not earning a large amount of money, vulnerable,
often having family or social connections that might link them

(01:45):
to organized crime, and through that they're being corrupted.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
How is it though if some of okay, some of
it is the corruption on the job, but some of
it is already corrupted and taking the job in order
to carry out the task that is necessary been asked
to carry out. Can't you when you're hiring the person
see the red flags?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yes and no? Yes, Well, first of all, you have
to have a system to properly vet people so that
you can pick up those who have some obvious links.
Others though, will be friends of friends from school and
this been New Zealand's you know, we're two degrees of separation,
and so often the baggage handlers might not have a history,

(02:29):
but might have a connection to someone who does, and
that's how they've brought in. The problem is that New
Zealand is too small and too friendly an environment, and
it makes it vulnerable for people we pulled into these
types of schemes.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
So they get pulled in apparently by shoe boxes of
cash with about two hundred thousand dollars stuffed into them.
And if that is the incentive, that's the lure, what
have we got to offer to stop them taking it?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I think part of it is, first of all, we've
got to target the drugs that are coming here. We've
got to you know, attack that as much as we can.
And what is good to see is that the police
here have been also targeting the facilitators, the people been
trying to make this happen. I think we need to
do a lot more of that, but we also need
to remove the temptation. So the point you're making about

(03:17):
the vetting that we can do, but we also looked
at setting up systems in these vulnerable places of the
monitoring and the checks and balances and relation to baggage
handlers of going to planes and taking luggage off planes
which has not come through the usual mechanism of going
through your bags or my bags that have gone through
the usual way. Because this is a known scheme that

(03:40):
is used around the world to move drugs, and so
it's something that we could target. We could target the process.
And also there's the education piece of getting in working
with these young people going into these roles, explaining to
them the risks, explaining to their families the risks, and
so that are aware of it, and we can start
using some of that grassroots you know, Kiwi we're all

(04:04):
in this together, team approach to say, well, look we
collectively want to fight this and so this is something
I want to tackle.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Interesting. Yeah, listen, Thank you very much. Steve has always appreciated.
Steve Simon, chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group for Organized Crime.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
News Talks.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.