DRUG COUNTS AGAINST TRIO FAIL TO STAND UP

Three people have walked free from the High Court at Auckland after drugs
charges were dropped.

A fourth person, Headhunter gang member Peter Cleven, also had one charge
dismissed but still faces further counts.

Justice Mark O'Regan threw out the charges through lack of evidence.

Anthony Clive Neho, aged 36, of Henderson, and Lawrence Murray Cresswell,
34, of Whangaparaoa, had been accused with Cleven of supplying
methamphetamine (speed) in late 1999 and last year.

Cleven's former partner, Sarah Jane Ruru, 27, of West Auckland, had been
charged with aiding and abetting Cleven to supply methamphetamine.

After the three were discharged, Cleven was left facing charges of
supplying methamphetamine over three years to 1999, possessing cannabis for
sale in December 1999 and selling cannabis over 12 years from 1988.

The Crown says Cleven had hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexplained
income and supported his lavish lifestyle by selling drugs.

In one bugged conversation at his million-dollar Titirangi property, the
38-year-old builder is said to have boasted of selling 100lb (45kg) of
cannabis a week.

Cleven told the jury yesterday that he had stupidly "put himself in the
position of someone else" in that conversation. Although speed and cannabis
had been consumed at his home, they had never been dealt there.

In his opening address, defence counsel David Jones said police had been
out to get Cleven because of his gang connections.

Though he knew people in the underworld, that did not make him guilty of
anything.

Mr Jones said Cleven was an astute businessman who had grafted all his
life. Everything he had, he earned; none of it came from drugs.

Cleven told the jury of his various business enterprises, from goat farming
and embryo transplants to building, debt-collecting, breeding pit bulls,
and interests in a Fort St bondage parlour and a peep show.

"The peep show made more money than all the others put together."

The trial continues today.