CUSTOMS MAN JAILED FOR DRUGS SMUGGLING

Auckland: The first time an international drugs syndicate approached
Customs officer Tori Puata, he used an internal system set up to help
Customs officers resist pressure from organised crime, the Auckland
District Court was told yesterday.

But the second time they tried him, he did not ask for help.

Instead, he became a corrupt insider, smuggling hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of methamphetamine across the border he had spent his career
protecting.

Yesterday, Puata was sentenced to nine years' jail with a minimum
non-parole period of five years for his part in the syndicate.

Acting Customs Service controller Tim Horner said the procedure the
department had to support officers approached by organised crime groups was
"strong enough" - Puata had just chosen to ignore it.

The Customs Service will not detail the internal procedure it has set up to
support officers approached by crime groups because it wants to keep the
system protected from those groups.

However, it was not Puata's use of the support system that led the service
to identify him as at risk of being corrupted. He was caught as part of its
investigations into the drug smuggling syndicate itself.

"There are those that are not prepared to play by the rules and
unfortunately Mr Puata was one bad apple in a very big barrel," Mr Horner said.

In sentencing Puata, Judge Simon Lockhart said Puata's crime was "a breach
of trust that can only be regarded as corruption of the highest level".

Puata had co-ordinated the syndicate's couriers while on duty at Auckland
Airport last year and even carried the drugs himself.

He gave syndicate members information about Customs Service profiling
techniques and work practices to help them circumvent controls.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of importing methamphetamine over
a seven-month period and faced a maximum of 14 years rather than the now
mandatory life sentence because the conspiracy began before the drug was
reclassified to class A.

Although the exact amount of drugs is not known, Puata admitted each
importation involved several ounces of crystal methamphetamine - a pure
form of the drug similar to P - with a street value of $140,000-$168,000.

No other members of the Australian-based syndicate have been caught.

Crown prosecutor Marc Corlett called for an "unmistakeable deterrent" to be
sent where there was the corruption of an officer of the state.

He said the dissemination of the Customs profiling techniques to the
criminal underworld was of "grave concern [and] its ongoing impact simply
cannot be known".