New Zealand Herald podcast on Kiwis imprisoned overseas
A daily news podcast episode examining New Zealanders currently held in foreign prisons.
Summary
NZ Herald senior journalist Anna Leask joins host Chelsea Daniels to examine the more than 70 New Zealanders currently known to be imprisoned overseas, with the true figure likely higher since notification of the New Zealand government is voluntary. Leask covers the range of offences involved, from minor drug charges to murder and sex trafficking, and discusses several high-profile cases in detail, including Raymond Parkinson, who received a nearly ten-year sentence in Victoria for heroin smuggling and claims he was unknowingly carrying the drugs as a result of a cryptocurrency scam. The conversation also addresses the particular dangers facing New Zealanders arrested in Asian jurisdictions where drug offences can carry the death penalty, the difficulties of navigating foreign legal systems, and the practical advice available to those arrested abroad.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and scope of the problem
Chelsea Daniels: There are more than 70 Kiwis banged up abroad, according to new data. But the true figure is likely higher, with many detainees choosing not to tell the New Zealand government that they've been arrested. They're detained across dozens of countries, from the US and Australia to parts of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. NZ Herald senior journalist Anna Leask has been looking into New Zealanders locked up overseas. She joins us today on The Front Page. First off, Anna, tell me about people banged up abroad. What are they mostly in for? How many are there?
Anna Leask: MFAT know of 70-odd cases of Kiwis in prisons overseas. They're either on remand, awaiting court action, or they've been sentenced. The cases span everything from minor drug allegations right up to big meth and heroin busts, trafficking, exploitation, and murder. We've got Kiwis in prison all over the world for all sorts of different things.
Chelsea Daniels: And why might there be more than what we know of?
Anna Leask: When you are arrested overseas, it's up to you whether you let the government here know. MFAT only have limited details because it only captures those who voluntarily make contact and let them know. While there are somewhere between 70 and 80 Kiwis on their list that they know of, there may be more out there who have simply not let the government know — for whatever reason, they've just not made that contact.
Chelsea Daniels: What are some of the reasons someone might not want to contact MFAT?
Anna Leask: There are a lot of reasons people choose not to contact MFAT. They didn't list them when they provided us this information, but I would imagine it might be Kiwis who have lived outside New Zealand for a long, long time. If you've lived in Australia for 20 or 30 years, you might not necessarily feel like you want to contact your old government. People might be trying to hide it from their friends and family — they might be embarrassed or ashamed. And there might also be people out there who just don't know. It doesn't occur to them to contact their own government for help, or they think they might get in trouble. There are lots of reasons people would choose not to contact the government when they're in trouble overseas.
Recent cases
Chelsea Daniels: What's one of the most recent cases that comes to mind?
Anna Leask: The first that comes to my mind are those two 22-year-olds arrested in Melbourne, charged with attempting to import a large quantity of meth into Australia. More recently, an elderly man from Northland, Raymond Parkinson, was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison in Victoria for his role in a heroin smuggling plot. Police found $2 million worth of the drug in his luggage when he was coming back from overseas. He claimed it was a cryptocurrency scam — that he was supposed to be getting paid and didn't know the drugs were in there. That went to trial and ultimately a jury found that he knew full well what was in his bags, and he is now locked up for a long time in Victoria. Those are probably the most recent cases I've covered.
Chelsea Daniels: Are most of the Kiwis locked up abroad in Australia?
Anna Leask: A lot of them are. There are also a lot in Asia and America, and fewer in Europe. But from my research, the majority are in Australia at the moment.
Chelsea Daniels: And in terms of the data, there must be a point where MFAT can't give too much away — say, if one person is locked up in Afghanistan or somewhere very specific?
Anna Leask: Yes, and the stats are broken down into categories: Australia, Asia, the USA, and Europe. Then there's another category in the data set — a very small number of people in really specific places around the world that MFAT aren't able to identify because of privacy rules. But as you'd expect, it's mostly Asia and Australia where Kiwis are finding themselves in the most trouble these days.
High-profile cases: Blaize Kot, Michael James Pratt, and Matthew Wolfe
Chelsea Daniels: I remember one case that you covered on your podcast, A Moment in Crime. Is it Blaize Kot?
Anna Leask: Blaize Kot. He's an Aucklander originally — grew up there with his parents and his sister. He moved to the States and was attending Cornell University, where he met a woman called Caroline Coffey. They got married in 2009, and one night they were sitting in their apartment uploading their wedding photos to social media. Hours later, she was found dead in a park near their home. She had her throat slit and her body abandoned. Blaze was found by police in a crashed car with self-inflicted wounds, and he had set fire to their apartment and tried to flee. He was arrested and charged in the States with murder, arson, and tampering with physical evidence, and was sentenced to life. He's probably one of the most famous cases I've written about.
Also Michael James Pratt and Matthew Wolfe, who were running websites including one called Girls Do Porn. Pratt was the ringleader of a large-scale criminal scheme in which they recruited young women under false pretences of modelling work, filmed them in exploitative situations, promised the footage would never be shared, and then uploaded it to adult websites and made a lot of money from it. Both are from Christchurch, and both were convicted effectively of sex trafficking. They'll spend a lengthy amount of time in prison in the States. Pratt was even on the FBI's most wanted list for a while because he was overseas, moving around the world, and no one could catch him. Eventually they did, and he's now serving that very serious sentence in the US.
Chelsea Daniels: It is interesting seeing Kiwis on the world stage doing these kinds of things. I remember when Pratt was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list — it's just like, what is a Kiwi doing on there? And I suppose when Kiwis and Australians get into trouble in Asia, where there's a death penalty for importing or exporting even a small amount of drugs, it really does make headlines. What are some of the most famous cases that come to mind — the ones where we kept seeing the headlines?
Cases in Asia: the Cohens and Anthony de Malmanche
Anna Leask: I think the most famous case would be Lorraine and Aaron Cohen. They were from Auckland, and in 1985 they were arrested in Malaysia for heroin possession. Malaysia had mandatory death penalty drug laws at the time, and Lorraine was actually sentenced to death, which was later commuted to a life sentence on appeal. Her son, who was just 18 at the time, received life imprisonment and corporal punishment. Both were pardoned and released in the 1990s and came back here, but they still served a long time in prison in Malaysia.
The other one that's probably most well known in my time is Anthony de Malmanche. He's a pensioner from the North Island who went to Bali thinking he was going to meet a woman — he'd got caught up in what was effectively a romance scam. He ended up in Kerobokan, Bali's most famous prison, where the Bali Nine and Schapelle Corby all spent time. He was caught with 1.7 kilos of meth in his suitcase. His defence is that he was unknowingly used as a drug mule after being targeted through the online romance scam. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The death penalty was on the table for him but wasn't imposed in the end. He's still in Bali, he's aging, he's very unwell, and his lawyers are still working on appeals and processes, trying to get him back home. At the moment he's in that awful, overcrowded prison in Bali, doing his time.
The fascination with Kiwis and Australians imprisoned abroad
Chelsea Daniels: I think I've been to Bali about five or six times since I was 16, so you're always aware of the dangers of bringing in drugs. You always understood that was not a good idea. I remember when Schapelle Corby was actually allowed to go back to her home in Queensland — the flight from Denpasar to Brisbane was just her, a couple of others, and mainly journalists. Why do you think there's such an intense fascination with people banged up abroad? There's a whole TV show about it.
Anna Leask: I think it's the prisons that these people are in — like Kerobokan, where Schapelle Corby and Anthony de Malmanche are. It's a world so far away from what we're used to. Most of us wouldn't even know what a normal prison is like, let alone these notorious overseas prisons. Hearing about and seeing Schapelle in court, the books and interviews she did in prison, seeing the conditions people are living in — I think there's just a fascination with it.
I've been there myself in Bali. I went to see if I could speak to a Kiwi who was locked up — Lisa Ormsby was there, recently arrested and awaiting her next hearing on drug charges. We went and spoke to the staff to see if we could see her, and just the main office area was so basic and so unlike anything I'd seen in New Zealand prisons. We didn't get to see her at the time. She wanted to focus on her defence, which went really well. She spent a comparatively short time in prison over there. She admitted she had been caught with cannabis and admitted to using drugs, which gives you a significant discount in Indonesia if you admit to using and having an addiction. She eventually returned to New Zealand.
But you think of people from normal Kiwi life going on these holidays and ending up in prisons that just sound and look absolutely terrifying — the conditions, the overcrowding, the rats, the sickness, the lack of food and medical care. I think there's a fascination with how people survive that, particularly those who face years and years of uncertainty, like Schapelle — is she going to be there forever? Is she going to face the death penalty, the firing squad? It's just so far removed from normal Kiwi life that we love to read about it and know about it.
Chelsea Daniels: I remember in Australia when the two leaders of the Bali Nine were executed by firing squad in Indonesia — it was rolling news coverage on Sky News. I think they even had a live shot outside the prison where it happened. I guess defending people charged in these different jurisdictions is quite difficult as well, because not only do you have a different jurisdiction, but different laws and different customs. What's that like for the lawyers trying to get these people out?
Anna Leask: It's hard. The advice I've had is that language and processes are different in every country. Some of them aren't as clear-cut as New Zealand. Some may not be as fair, and there's a lot of corruption out there. Finding a good lawyer can be really, really hard — finding a lawyer who understands you, who speaks English, who isn't potentially working for the police or carrying other ulterior motives. If you've got financial resources, you're obviously going to do better. But being cut off from your family and friends and everything you know, on top of trying to navigate a foreign justice system, is extremely hard. Lawyers tell me it's extremely challenging for people in custody.
Practical advice for New Zealanders arrested overseas
Chelsea Daniels: We've actually delved into this topic before — it was basically what Kiwis can do if they get arrested overseas, back in March 2024 when those brothers were accused of assaulting a cop in Thailand. The idea is it's a good idea to ditch the "she'll be right" attitude — Kiwis have a very big approach to that — and realise that different countries have different rules, and sometimes they're a lot harsher than you think. What's some other advice you've heard?
Anna Leask: The best advice is: if you are arrested overseas, get hold of MFAT and the embassy officials in that country as soon as you can, and get your family onto it. There's also an organisation called Law Aid, and I spoke to one of the lawyers, Craig Tuck, who's the head of that. He's worked with Anthony de Malmanche and others, so he knows what he's doing and knows how to get the right lawyers and the right people to help you overseas. His advice is just to contact MFAT or Law Aid immediately if you've been arrested, or if your family member has been arrested. Don't risk it. Don't wait and hope that someone will help. Get someone who knows what they're doing to connect you with the right people and navigate that process from the get-go, because you're going to be dealing with so many things that are so different — just in terms of daily survival in an overseas prison — that you need someone advocating for you who knows the system and can get you the best results and make sure you're being treated properly and fairly.
The other advice from any of the agencies is simply: don't do drugs overseas. Don't think you can cheat the system. It's not worth it. These overseas prisons are nothing like you can imagine and nothing like what we have in New Zealand. They're hard, and they're often awful, isolating, challenging, and scary. Just think twice before you do anything that could get you in trouble.
Chelsea Daniels: Thanks for joining us, Anna.
Anna Leask: Thanks, Chelsea. Thanks for having me.