A home, a drift car and a motorbike are among the $700,000 in assets seized by police an operation leading to the arrest of a Hawke’s Bay couple accused of dealing methamphetamine, cocaine and cannabis.<\/p>\n
Armed police executed a series of search warrants across Napier and Hastings last week, completing an investigation dubbed Operation Sleep that began in 2025.<\/p>\n
Detective Owen McCool said the raids drew on staff from across the district.<\/p>\n
“The searches uncovered methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis, and synthetics packaged for sale,” he said.<\/p>\n
Officers also found more than $5000 in cash, two unlawful firearms and ammunition, all of which was seized.<\/p>\n
Among the assets ordered to be restrained under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 are a residential property, cash and bank accounts worth $100k, and three vehicle.<\/p>\n
A 34-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman have each been charged with multiple counts of supplying and possession for supply. They are due in Hastings District Court on September 8.<\/p>\n
Acting detective sergeant Shaun Kennard said the case showed police working through both the criminal and civil courts.<\/p>\n
“By targeting illicit benefits obtained by drug offending, the offenders are denied the success of their offending and removes their ability to expand their offending,” he said.<\/p>\n
Kennard said the message was aimed wider than the couple.<\/p>\n
“Organised crime and gangs cause serious harm to our communities. Police will continue to work to strip organised crime groups and their associates of their wealth earnt from criminal activity.”<\/p>\n
Inquiries are continuing and further charges have not been ruled out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A home, a drift car and a motorbike are among the $700,000 in assets seized by police an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,20277,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-579606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-hawke-s-bay","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}