• Collins Ezeala wants back the $32,530 taken from his car by New Zealand police in 2010.
• The High Court ruled it’s too late for Ezeala to reclaim the money.
• Ezeala, deported to Nigeria seven years ago, said he needed the cash to pay for life-saving cancer treatment.

Nigerian drug-runner Collins Ezeala did his prison time and was deported years ago, but can’t stop thinking of the $32,500 New Zealand police took from his car in 2010.

He still wants it back. He says he needs it to pay for life-saving medical treatment now he has cancer.

The High Court, however, has ruled it is too late, even though a judge previously decided the money could not be said to have been earned from Ezeala’s criminal activity.

Ezeala has been trying to get the money back through the courts for years - since before he was deported back to Nigeria in 2017.

Various things have got in his way. Back in his home country, he was unemployed and faced economic hardship.

Then came the Covid pandemic, which made things more difficult, and in later years he was unable to raise the money he would need to pay into a New Zealand court as security for any costs awarded against him if things didn’t go his way.

In January this year, he was diagnosed with cancer, on top of chronic diabetes.

As Ezeala said in an affidavit filed last month in the High Court at Auckland, he never stopped thinking about the money taken from him in New Zealand 14 years ago, and how much he needed it.

‘Only chance of survival’

Particularly, he needed it now for his medical costs. He claimed that the $32,530 represented his “only chance of survival”.

Ezeala’s case dates back to 2010 when he was arrested and charged with importing methamphetamine into New Zealand and possessing methamphetamine for supply.

Ezeala, his house and his car were all searched by police.

He was found to be carrying $1528 on his person. In his house, police found $14,000. From his car they took the $32,530.

Following a jury trial in 2012, Ezeala was found guilty on both the charges he faced and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Significantly, his convictions were for importing and possessing the methamphetamine, not for selling it. On that basis, Judge Garry Harrison formed the view in 2015 that it could not be said that the money had been acquired through Ezeala’s offending.

The $14,000 found in Ezeala’s house and the $1528 he had been carrying were returned to him. He made the mistake, however, of not asking for the money that had been found in the car - at that time.

He made that request at the end of 2016, filing an application in the District Court seeking the “full and final return” of the $32,530 that had been found in his car.

Released on parole, deported

Around this time, however, he was released on parole and deported, in March 2017. The money was deemed forfeited.

Ezeala appealed against that forfeiture order from Nigeria in 2017, but the appeal was considered to have been abandoned in September that year when he failed to pay security for costs.

Only on August 19 this year did Ezeala file another application seeking to have the forfeiture overturned by the High Court. He didn’t hire a New Zealand lawyer to do so. He made the application himself.

The forfeiture order had been made under the Summary Proceedings Act (SPA), not the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery) Act 2009, under which forfeiture orders related to assets gained by criminal activity are commonly made.

The relevant sections of the SPA have since been repealed, but they continued to apply to Ezeala’s case.

The appeal period specified in the SPA was 28 days, well short of the years it took for Ezeala to file his application, so the first hurdle Ezeala faced was in seeking to appeal the decision well out of time.

He pointed out that Judge Harrison had found the money did not derive from his unlawful activities.

He said that the only reason Judge Harrison had ordered the cash seized from the car to be forfeited was because he - Ezeala - did not claim it at that time. Had he done so, he argued, he would have been entitled to it.

Ezeala said his current position was that he was “merely reserving his right to claim the cash seized from his car” when he did not push for it in 2017. He still claimed full ownership of it, even in 2024.

Ezeala said Judge Harrison made an error when he did not order the money be returned in 2017, and accordingly Ezeala has suffered a miscarriage of justice.

Justice Christine Gordon said Collins Ezeala could have filed his appeal much earlier. File photo / Dean Purcell

Ezeala’s case was brought before Justice Christine Gordon in the High Court at Auckland.

There, counsel for the police argued that Ezeala’s latest application was an “abuse of process” as he had already brought and abandoned an appeal in 2017, when he failed to pay security for costs.

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Nor could he give a satisfactory explanation of why his newest application had taken so long.

Justice Gordon noted it had taken seven years - “a very significant delay”. Ezeala had contacted five barristers before filing his proceeding on his own behalf and obtaining a fee waiver for costs.

“Mr Ezeala could have done that far earlier,” she said.

“Mr Ezeala now says the cash seized from the car was a loan from his co-defendant and he also says this was money he had saved.

“In any appeal, the police would obviously wish to respond to those assertions. There would be prejudice to the police in making inquiries and obtaining evidence more than 10 years down the track.”

Justice Gordon said when police applied for orders and they were made in court, there was a general interest in those orders being complied with.

“I consider there is a general prejudice if the forfeiture orders are to be overturned many years later,” she said.

Justice Gordon also said Ezeala had not provided any evidence his cancer could not be treated through the public health service in Nigeria.

“In summary, none of the appeal grounds has any merit.”

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.