A secret witness has revealed to a High Court jury in great detail how he was recruited by gang leaders to make a covert trip from Te Puke to Picton for a clandestine drugs deal with a man known as 'Two Times”.

Nine senior members of the Mongols are on trial in Hamilton, on a raft of drugs and weapons charges.

It is one of biggest criminal trials in recent New Zealand history, and comes more than two years after police swooped on the gang.

Operation Silk, as it was called, resulted in the arrest of the entire senior hierarchy of the gang on a raft of drugs and weapons charges.

At the time of the arrests in June 2020, police said a gang war was brewing in the Bay of Plenty region, with numerous groups battling for the lion's share of the drug market there.

Among those on trial is the Mongols' national president, Jim David Thacker, who is charged alongside gang members Hone 'H1” Ronaki, Leon Huritu, Jason Ross, Kelly Petrowski, Matthew Ramsden, Kane Ronaki, Te Reneti Tarau, and another man who has interim name suppression.

On Monday the court heard from a Crown witness, a former member of the gang who has been granted name suppression and appeared in court on audio-visual link from another location.

The man spoke of how he met some members of the gang including Ronaki - to whom he is related - and Petrowski, also known as 'Rhino”, in early 2019, when he was living in Te Puke.

At the time the gang members were operating under the Bandidos name.

'I remember [meeting Ronaki] distinctively, because he took half of my bag of weed.”

The witness said he had injured his hand while doing forestry work, and was living on ACC support at the time.

Meanwhile, the gangsters had 'a lot of money. They got what they wanted with no work”.

How much money, asked Crown prosecutor Anna Pollett.

'Stacks ... Thousands. They had all the flash cars, clothes, everything.”

He met Thacker, also known as JD, in a house near Te Puke in May or June of that year.

Shortly before, he and Ronaki met and discussed 'doing a drive” – a journey to deliver drugs – to Picton.

It had taken some time to meet Thacker, because the other gang members 'sort of protected him from meeting anyone new ... They were a bit paranoid”.

The witness said he was recruited by Ronaki for the drug run because he had a full driver's licence.

Prior to the trip south, Petrowski and Ronaki took him to the Papamoa Plaza mall to buy a cellphone, onto which Petrowski loaded an app called Wickr, which supposedly allows for encrypted communications.

The witness spoke of how he left Te Puke in a VF Commodore and headed south, 'pinging” Ronaki on Wickr as he passed through each town to let him know how he was progressing.

Hidden in a roof compartment in the car were two cylindrical packages containing drugs.

He drove straight to Wellington and took the ferry to Picton. Once there, he was contacted by a man known as 'Two Times” – 'because he says everything twice” – who was driving a blue Toyota Hilux Surf.

The pair met in a rest area just outside Picton, where the deal was done: He handed over the drugs and Two Times gave him $7000, after 'he let his German Shepherd out”.

Before long he was making such trips about once a week – 'Picking up guns, dropping off guns, picking up drugs, dropping off drugs, picking up money, dropping off money.”

Not long after making his first delivery, one of the Bay of Plenty-based Bandidos members was attacked by members of the gang at a party in Christchurch, and suffered head injuries.

"Someone must have dealt to him."

Thacker, Ronaki and another member subsequently flew to Christchurch, where there was another violent retaliatory altercation in a car park. Footage of that incident was shared on Instagram by Thacker "for the boys to have a good laugh at".

The witness said "higher ups" in the Bandidos in Australia caught wind of what was happening, and asked for Thacker and Ronaki to hand in their patches - "but they refused to".

Soon after, the Bay of Plenty members opted to make the transition to the Mongols.

"They basically found another gang to jump in on."

Not long after, the witness said he started seeing members wearing Mongols-branded clothing.

Also, about this time, Thacker invested in some $3000 'cypher phones” – devices which were encrypted on their own platform.

Each senior gang member got their own code name. The witnesses' was 'Wheelman”. Thacker went by several names including 'Detrimental” and 'Hellbound”, because he frequently became paranoid about being monitored and smashed his phones, the witness said.

The witness said in addition to driving he did some 'prospecting” for the gang – 'driving around, doing bits and pieces – anything the club asks you to do, you do it” – and reporting directly to Ronaki and Thacker.

Many of the witnesses' trips involved him picking up 1kg to 4kg blocks of raw methamphetamine from the gang's Auckland contact, taking it to Te Puke where it would be 'cut” with another substance such as a joint pain supplement, and then transported to Christchurch.

There, he would usually meet with Ross, who was the Mongol's top man in the South Island and was known by the code name '666”.

The first of those meetings resulted in an exchange of a 2kg block of cut methamphetamine for a shoebox containing $100,000.

The raw drugs were kept in packages that looked like 'shiny green teabag” packages that contained 'solid little bricks”.

'When you open it, it just hisses because of the air trapped inside ... It looks like a big clump of broken glass all jammed together”.

He also recounted receiving a suitcase and a 'swimming pool box” filled with guns, which were left in his care for safekeeping. The bigger package contained 'the big guns” such as AK47s and AR15s.

-Stuff/Mike Mather.