Glenn Dobson: Drug Detection Agency CEO on New Zealand's response to organised crime

Experts fighting organised crime say New Zealand must pick up its act to keep pace with trans-national criminals.  

They've released their second report, criticising New Zealand's response to modern crime and money laundering.  

It wants cash to be made a less attractive option for criminals and to ban crypto currency ATMs.  

Drug Detection Agency Chief Executive Glenn Dobson told Ryan Bridge the criminals work quickly, and so must authorities.  

He says New Zealand must get with the times to block criminal groups from using their profits.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Casey Costello's Organized Crime Task Force that April reported it
is out and it's quite a doozy. Actually, some interesting
stuff in here. They say one of the biggest lies
in the world is that crime doesn't pay. It actually does.
Cops currently restraining seventy five million dollars a year in assets.
They want to do more. So some of the recommendations
from them. They say, ideally you would ban cash all

(00:22):
together in New Zealand because obviously that's the currency of
your criminal right. But they say you can't do that,
so you've got to restrict its use. Certain industries they say,
like construction, hospitality, agriculture. Certain industries they say should be
banned from paying wages in cash. You would have to
use electronic means. They want the cops to be able

(00:42):
to monitor bank accounts in real time. A whole bunch
of stuff in here. Joining me to discuss Glen Dobbs
and the Drug Detection Agency CEO Glenn good morning, Yeah,
good morning, right, what did you make of that?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, Look, it was interesting reading. I think the main
part of the report reinforce it favorable in terms of
business improve the market, and that's the same for transnational
organized crime groups. You know, we're moving a lot of
drugs New Zealands at the moment, and they go, I
guess is to make unfavorable are taking cash and bring
around other regulations around that.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
The problem they've always got is that crime moves fast,
and enforcement agencies can only move at the speed of law,
and that often takes too long.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, that's right, and that's a challenge not only domestically
in New Zealand, but obviously we're talking about transnational organized crime.
The agencies obviously have to play within the rules of
the regulations allow them to play with And I think
what this report is doing is saying, hey, look, we
need to move faster, we need to move with times.
We're dealing with financial markets and that moves quickly, and

(01:44):
we need to give our authority the best chance to
target the profits of the transnational organized crime groups to
stop these drugs coming into our country.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
That graph, how scary was it? Looking at that graph
that shows the price of methanphetamine and which has come down,
but the use the consumption of it that there's just
a line going to the sky.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, look that it is really scary for the country.
And you know, we've seen racing is on the waist
wood a stack show that meth is going through the
roof as well. The Drug detex Changing. We had a
conference just last week. We had some US experts over
speaking about the global movements of drugs and so on,
and one of our experts on meth if you opened
the conference with saying very clearly, at all it is

(02:28):
all about the money. It's the one thing it's all about.
And whether they're moving drugs or where they're moving human trafficking,
whether they're doing other sort of illicit trades, it's all
about the money. So I really support this report trying
to cut their ability to use the profits.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah. Interesting stuff. Appreciate your time this morning, Glenn. Glenn Dobson,
the Drug detect Detectant Agency CEO, just gone nine minutes
away from six. Yeah. One of the other things that
it mentions is the crypto ATMs. We've got about two
hundred crypto ATMs and you get then they say we
shouldn't they should all be banned for.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
More fam earlier edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to
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