WELLINGTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) — A pilot and a passenger were injured after their light plane crashed on New Zealand Great Barrier Island on Tuesday, 90 km northeast of Auckland.
The Great Barrier Airlines plane was carrying two pilots and four passengers. It was on an out-bound flight when it crashed into a swamp near the runway on Tuesday, the New Zealand Press Association reported.
The pilot and passenger suffered moderate back injuries and are being taken by rescue helicopter to the Auckland Hospital.
Morton said the money will be forfeited in accordance with the laws of the nations where it was seized, with Colombia keeping $28 million and Mexico getting $13 million.
“None of these monies will be forfeited to the United States,” he said.
While large, this month’s cash seizure is not a record. In March of 2007, officials in Mexico officials confiscated $207 million in cash in what was then called the largest drug-related cash seizure in history.
ICE is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, investigating financial crime, trade fraud, narcotics smuggling and cash smuggling, the agency said. ICE was established in 2003 after the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
All of the money was concealed in sacks of fertilizer chemicals in containers transported on commercial ships, Morton said.
“When it’s packed in very large containers, it’s extremely difficult to probe; it’s extremely difficult to X-ray. And so it was a very good means of concealing currency,” he said.
The ports of Buenaventura and Manzanillo are key points along a well-known route used for smuggling cocaine northward to Mexico and then on to the United States, and for sending cash back into Colombia, where most of the cocaine originates, ICE said in a news release.
Morton called the smugglers “very, very sophisticated,” saying they were using the lawful shipping trade to send drug profits from the U.S. through Mexico to Colombia.
On September 10, a second seizure of U.S. currency estimated at $11.2 million also was made at the Buenaventura port.
• On September 11, a shipment of $11 million was discovered hidden inside two shipping containers at the Port of Manzanillo.
• On September 14, ICE special agents, along with Colombian authorities, discovered three additional shipping containers in Buenaventura containing about $5 million in $100 and $50 bills. These shipping containers also originated in Manzanillo.
On September 18, authorities seized $2.15 million in $100 bills concealed inside two containers aboard a vessel that arrived in Manzanillo.
“This seizure represents a bad day for organized crime,” ICE Director John Morton said at a Monday news conference in Washington. “Forty-one million dollars is not a rounding error. The loss of that kind of money hurts.”
Mexican and Colombian officials working with U.S. agents have seized about $41 million in cash hidden in shipping containers, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced Monday.
The U.S. agency, commonly called ICE, says the seizures were made September 9-18. It called them the largest seizure of cash ever found in shipping containers destined for Colombia and the largest for the agency since its inception.
According to ICE:
• On September 9, Colombian customs inspectors and Colombian national police, acting on intelligence reports, seized $11.2 million in U.S. currency hidden in two shipping containers. The containers were aboard a vessel that sailed from the Port of Manzanillo, Mexico, and was headed to Buenaventura, Colombia. Colombian customs inspectors said it was the most cash ever seized by police at a port in the nation.
Geimer, now 45, married and a mother of three, sued Polanski and received an undisclosed settlement. She long ago came forward and made her identity public — mainly, she said, because she was disturbed by how the criminal case had been handled.
Following Espinoza’s ruling earlier this year, Geimer’s lawyer, Larry Silver, said he was disappointed and that Espinoza “did not get to the merits and consider the clear proof of both judicial and prosecutorial corruption.”
He argued in court that had “Mr. Polanski been treated fairly” his client would not still be suffering because of publicity almost 32 years after the crime.
Polanski’s arrest Saturday came two days after one of his wife’s killers died.
The director’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four others were butchered by members of the Manson “family” in August 1969. Polanski was filming in Europe at the time.
By her own admission, Susan Atkins held the eight-months-pregnant Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, stabbing the 26-year-old actress 16 times.
Polanski’s lawyers tried earlier this year to have the charges thrown out, but a Los Angeles judge rejected the request.
In doing so, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza left the door open to reconsider his ruling if Polanski shows up in court.
Espinoza also appeared to acknowledge problems with the way Polanski’s case was handled years ago.
According to court documents, Polanski, his lawyer and the prosecutor thought they’d worked out a deal that would spare Polanski from prison and let the young victim avoid a public trial.
But the original judge in the case, who is now dead, first sent the director to maximum-security prison for 42 days while he underwent psychological testing. Then, on the eve of his sentencing, the judge told attorneys he was inclined to send Polanski back to prison for another 48 days.
Polanski fled the United States for France, where he was born.
In the February hearing, Espinoza mentioned a documentary film that depicts backroom deals between prosecutors and a media-obsessed judge who was worried his public image would suffer if he didn’t send Polanski to prison.
According to a probation report contained in the filing, Huston described the victim as “sullen.”
“She appeared to be one of those kind of little chicks between — could be any age up to 25. She did not look like a 13-year-old scared little thing,” Huston said.
She added that Polanski did not strike her as the type of man who would force himself on a young girl.
“I don’t think he’s a bad man,” she said in the report. “I think he’s an unhappy man.”
Polanski pleaded guilty to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
There have been repeated attempts to settle the case over the years, but the sticking point has always been Polanski’s refusal to return to attend hearings.
Prosecutors have consistently argued that it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a man to go free who “drugged and raped a 13-year-old child.”
The Swiss Justice Ministry said Polanski was put “in provisional detention.” But whether he can be extradited to the United States “can be established only after the extradition process judicially has been finalised,” a ministry spokesman said in an e-mail.
“It is possible to appeal at the federal penal court of justice against an arrest warrant in view to extradition as well as against an extradition decision,” the spokesman wrote. “Their decisions can be taken further to the federal court of justice.”
Gibbons said the extradition process will be determined in Switzerland, but said authorities are ready to move forward with Polanski’s sentencing process, depending on what happens in Zurich.
Polanski was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and a sliver of a quaalude tablet and performing various sex acts, including intercourse, with her during a photo shoot at actor Jack Nicholson’s house. He was 43 at the time.
Nicholson was not at home, but his girlfriend at the time, actress Anjelica Huston, was.
Polanski was nominated for best director Oscars for “Tess” and “Chinatown,” and for best writing for “Rosemary’s Baby,” which he also directed. He was en route to the Zurich Film Festival, which is holding a Polanski tribute this year, when he was arrested by Swiss authorities, the festival said.
A provisional arrest warrant was issued last week out of Los Angeles, California, after authorities learned Polanski was going to be in Switzerland, Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, told CNN on Sunday.
There have been repeated attempts to settle the case over the years, but the sticking point has always been Polanski’s refusal to return to attend hearings. Prosecutors have consistently argued that it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a man to go free who “drugged and raped a 13-year-old child.”