Comancheros Trial: Pasilika Naufahu Found Guilty of Money Laundering

A jury has found Comancheros chief Pasilika Naufahu guilty of money laundering and drug charges.

Naufahu was found guilty of two counts of money laundering, one regarding a Ford Ranger and the other regarding a $ 102,075 Bentley.

Both he and fellow comanchero Connor Clausen were convicted of conspiring to supply class B pseudoephedrine in September 2018.

A woman, whose name was removed, was also found guilty on one count of helping the gang launder money in July and August 2018.

Their shared trial lasted four weeks in Auckland High Court before entering a fifth week for jury deliberations.

Judge Graham Lang said it was a huge imposition on the jury to spend so many weeks of their time on the case and thanked them for their service.

“You, as members of the public, can attend the sentencing,” the Superior Court judge told them.

Judge Lang has handed down sentences for all three defendants.

Naufahu will be sentenced on November 24 and Clausen on December 9.

The prosecution

The three were arrested at the end of an undercover investigation into the activities of the Comanchero Motorcycle Club, codenamed Operation Nova.

Naufahu was the president of the Auckland chapter of the Comancheros.

More than 80 police officers participated in the raids, which led to the seizure of assets worth $ 4 million, including firearms and various luxury vehicles such as a Rolls-Royce Wraith and gold-plated Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

During the High Court trial, the Crown’s case against Naufahu included that the money moved for the Ford Ranger and the Bentley could not be explained by employment.

While the defense case, led by Ron Mansfield, argued that the gang leader had numerous sources of income and the Crown had not proven where the money came from.

During the trial, one count of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to import a Class A drug were dismissed by Naufahu.

Naufahu was also charged, along with Connor Clausen, with conspiring to supply class B pseudoephedrine in September 2018.

The Crown alleged that Clausen, further down the chain of gangs, should hand over money, inspect the drugs, and return them to the comancher chief.

Clausen was caught on film for just over two minutes meeting a suspected drug dealer and He Sha in September 2018.

The latter, an Australian hairdresser, was sentenced earlier this year in Auckland District Court to three years in prison.

At Sha’s sentencing, Judge Claire Ryan said that she had come to New Zealand for “the purpose of committing a crime.”

Also on the dock for the lengthy High Court trial was the woman, who cannot be named in the suppression order.

His defense had maintained that he thought what he was doing was legal and did not know of any connection to the Comancheros.

But the prosecution said she and another man joked that the money could come from gangs like the Comancheros or the Head Hunters.

“The point of the joke has to be that this could very well be dirty money,” Crown Prosecutor David Johnstone had said.

“It’s a strange job, isn’t it? Getting paid to deposit money.”

The trial began with a total of five defendants, but that number was reduced by two when various charges were dropped.

A media personality was acquitted and released from trial, while accountant Wiwini Himi Hakaraia was acquitted of most charges, but fined $ 2,000 for possession of cocaine at the “high end.”

A total of four charges against Hakaraia were dismissed, while he pleaded guilty to two amended charges of possession of a Class A drug.