An alleged international cocaine smuggler who fled New Zealand 10 years ago has been arrested in Europe and detectives are working to bring him back to face charges.
Rokas Karpavicius was charged with conspiracy to import cocaine in 1999 but escaped overseas two years later while on bail.
The Lithuanian was never caught, but was last year named in a trial in the High Court at Auckland as the global kingpin of a drug and money-laundering syndicate.
His fingerprints were found on a Harry Potter book couriered from Spain to Auckland which had the Class A drug LSD hidden in its spine.
Photographs produced at the trial show Karpavicius, who was 21 when he fled New Zealand, lounging on a luxury yacht in Europe surrounded by bikini-clad beauties.
But he has finally been arrested after 10 years at large.
The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant John Sowter, said Karpavicius was taken into police custody in Latvia as he travelled to Turkey.
A "red notice'' posted by Interpol had alerted Latvian authorities to the serious drugs charges he faced in New Zealand.
Police were now organising paperwork in a bid to extradite him.
Karpavicius disappeared on a false passport in 2001, skipping the country while on a $100,000 bail bond for cocaine and methamphetamine charges.
His name resurfaced during the trial in October last year, where he was named as the global kingpin of a drug and money-laundering syndicate.
As well as having his fingerprints on the Harry Potter book, drug squad detectives also tapped phone calls between Karpavicius and Ronald Terrence Brown, one of the godfathers of the criminal underworld.
Brown, 66, admitted bringing millions of dollars of drugs into New Zealand and was sentenced to 11 years in prison after admitting eight charges related to the importation and supply of Ecstasy, methamphetamine and LSD.
He also admitted using a false passport and laundering more than $4 million over three years.
The court heard evidence from Mr Sowter that Brown had paid millions of dollars to Karpavicius through bank account transfers or money mules.
- Jared Savage of the New Zealand Herald
