BUSINESSMAN'S CASH STARTED 'P' EPIDEMIC

A prominent Auckland businessman kick-started the methamphetamine trade in
New Zealand with $720,000 seed money, gang members have claimed.

Well-placed gang sources have told the Sunday Star-Times the man promised
the money at an infamous "Top Table" meeting in a building he owns in
downtown Auckland.

Gang members, including the Headhunters and Black Power, put aside
rivalries to meet at the building in late 1999 and early 2000 to divide the
fledgling drug trade.

The Star-Times cannot name the man for legal reasons, but can reveal he is
a well-connected company director worth millions of dollars.

"If it wasn't for (the man) and his money, New Zealand wouldn't have a P
epidemic," said a source close to the Headhunters.

The gang members carved up the duties needed to make methamphetamine. The
Headhunters operated as management, organising the manufacture and market.

The Headhunters are seen as the criminal masterminds, with a small number
of patched members relying on contracted muscle - sometimes from affiliated
gangs - for other tasks.

The method is just one used by the gang to protect itself from prosecution.

Other gangs such as Black Power provided the manpower, whose duties
included gathering cold and flu tablets containing the essential ingredient
pseudoephedrine.

Sources in the criminal fraternity suggested the investment by the
businessman was a payback to assistance given by the Headhunters in an
earlier business deal.

Others said the money was provided simply through the businessman's close
association and social friendship with the gangs.

Although the investment led to the drug's boom in New Zealand,
methamphetamine made an entrance more than 20 years earlier when Hell's
Angels arranged a training course in 1979 to teach its Australasian
chapters how to manufacture it.

A former senior member of the Hell's Angels told the Star-Times gang
members from across Australia and a few from New Zealand spent a week in
Australia learning how to cook methamphetamine.

The drug was going through a boom in the US, and Hell's Angels were
enjoying a widespread prominence that has faded since.

The manufacturing techniques were brought back to New Zealand and Hell's
Angels carried off the occasional "cook", mainly for use within the gang
and its associates.

As Hell's Angels numbers fell in the face of competition from growing gangs
such as the Mongrel Mob and Black Power, any semblance of organised
methamphetamine manufacture vanished.

It was only cooperation of those gangs, through the formal structure of the
"Top Table" meeting, that allowed an epidemic to grow.

Police concerns about dealings between gangs are revealed in the national
"Organised Crime Policy".

Intelligence experts, who wrote the policy, said: "Increasing evidence of
interactions and partnerships between organised crime groups suggests
organised crime is not simply defined by ethnicity or ethos but also by a
common desire to make money as a primary reason for engaging in crime."