NZ: Colombia-linked cocaine syndicate in rural Canterbury imported drugs worth millions | Cannabis Law Report

Stiff prison sentences have been handed out to South American citizens who, while working on farms in the South Island, formed themselves into a drug-smuggling syndicate that brought millions of dollars of cocaine into New Zealand. Ric Stevens reports on the Colombian connection to rural Canterbury.

Hororata is a village on the Canterbury Plains with a population of about 200, best known for its annual Highland Games festival.

But for a while, together with other Canterbury towns such as Dunsandel and Darfield, it also hosted a syndicate of an international cocaine-smuggling operation tracing back to the feared drug cartels of Colombia.

The group of Colombian farm workers became the biggest supplier of cocaine in New Zealand during the nearly four years they were operating.