The Sweeney’s doing ninety ’cause they’ve got the word to go
They get a gang of villains in a shed up at Heathrow
They’re counting out the fivers when the handcuffs lock again
In and out of Wandsworth with the numbers on their names
It’s funny how their missus always look so bleeding same
And meanwhile at the station there’s a couple of likely lads
Who swear like, “How’s your father?” and they’re very cool for cats
They’re cool for cats (cool for cats) – ‘Cool For Cats’ Squeeze

A story of luxury cars, mansions, super yachts, dead bodies, drugs rings, nasty videos and a shit load of dodgy top cops. Ben Vidgen Investigates.

If you were able to fly a drone over every top cop’s house looking for signs of excess wealth I for one am pretty sure the mystery of McSkimming, the ex-traffic cop and maritime costal patrollers, meteor rise to the top and how he accumulated a 2.5 million mansion, luxury car rental company ( that has no office, permanent staff or even a website, telephone or email), rental properties, offshore holidays and expensive hobbies, would be solved. Frankly anyone who has business ties with McSkimming should also be stood down pending investigation but we all know that won’t happen and the current purge of New Zealand police officer is being confined to those with ties to Labor and Judith Collins (what Michael Fiels had called a Pakeha coup) tightens national own influence with the police for political purposes not out of sense of cleaning up the public image of the police damages after viewing repeated episode of the Fiasco Squad.

And don’t stop there.

Above just a few of Swan’s toys less than 3 million of the over twenty million dollars milked from the Dunedin hospital and other service Swann held with DGB affiliates after authorities finally stepped despite being warned on many occasions.

Today, Michael Swan, who stole at least 20 million from the DHB while turning up McSkimming’s style to work every day in a fleet of super cars and super yachts, drives reportedly an Aston Martin (I wonder if it’s a rental or leased), after only returning a fraction of what he stole. Swan’s girlfriend was a model in an ad for the local casino, where the inspectors where all ex-cops and the high rollers often included local judge and local bad guys, ex biker bosses turned used car salesmen or real estate agents ect. Gang patches get dumped and suit ties and membership to local golf clubs, yachting clubs and community boards mark the transition. During his trial Swan, who married into top local lawyers and accounting firms, was basically basing his defense around the position of ‘I don’t know why you’re picking on me. I only did what everyone else in middle management and above is doing’. The subsequent SFO investigation would only focus on his hospital contract. His contract to other medical bodies was studiously ignored. As no one asked the local bankers just how much money did move through Swans accounts.

This year’s moves are afoot to counter organized crime in NZ. It comes as the government confirms what I wrote in 1999 (when apparently, we were the least corrupt country on earth – yeah good one), that NZ’s top national security threat in the coming decades would be organised crime. The move is a day late, a dollar short, as it hires regulation consultants not organised crime experts to come up with a plan.

The plan?

More red tape that targets the bottom of the pyramid, with zero attempt to vet and monitor the top. NZ remains vulnerable to growing organising crime and corruption due to our leader’s allergy to a need for Counterintelligence (who watches the watchers).

The IPCA is a joke and it’s not fit for purpose. To paraphrase Peter Gibbons, then a detective, in Bruce Ansley Stoned on Duty, the IPCA primary purpose was not to protect the public from bad cops but to protect the police from public scrutiny.

Cop Out Cover Up by ex-cop Tom Lewis said the same thing. The Goddard Blazely inquiry/review which named Gibbons (now a PI) and ICPA staff as involved in a toxic culture was utterly ignored. And the fact those named officers even got caught hiring a PI to dig up dirt on a judge made not one whit of difference.

I have watched one detective named get blasted by judges routinely for multiple breaches of conduct. And without fail he continues to be promoted up the ranks. That single cop may have a direct hand in preventing the discovery of Brenton Tarrant which as a result led to 51 people being murdered in 2019. All to cover up the Dunedin Cops links to dubious gun clubs whose habits of posing with bayonets and Confederate flags got not one mention in the Royal Inquiry. An inquiry that whitewashed the intelligence failures that prevented warning from been acted upon.

The Royal Inquiry would take the police investigating themselves at their own word (despite two existing report that criticized the culture of the Dunedin CIB) when they took report of the Dunedin Rifle clubs (photos above) Brenton Tarrant was using as hot bed of extremist behavior as hear say despite one of the witness own statuses as decorated solider. The suggestion the range exhibiting behavior including the use of human military style targets, bayonets, pimps up weapons and other display of Milita material inappropriate was written off as hear say. Above photos from the Bruce style rifle range – since then most of these images have been scrubbed from the net as the tools deployed to save us from hate speech are used instead to cover assess. The issue of how many police officer and security firms with military right-wing ties use these ranges was never examined. As the issue of how gang member accessed an open safe (originally describes as locked y the Dunedin police) from affiliated pistol club which also an indication of issue with these clubs was like wise absent from the Royal Inquiry final report in the Christchurch Mosque shootings.

An event which occurred under ex Dunedin old boy, Police Commissioner Howard Broad as a consultant to the SIS I have investigated Swan, his mentor Alasdair Cassels, the Bain case, the Hope Olivia case. These all involved the same names in blue, and I just felt sick. Massive blatant deviations from normal procedures. Which in each case prevented justice from ever occurring. Police dismissed the Blair family’s concerns out right. Even though there are now five disappeared bodies connected to Cassel and the man’s funeral read like a who’s who of Christchurch’s crime and shady property dealings.

McSkimming’s nasty videos is not a new story.

We heard it in Cops & Cover Up The police insisted that this sort of thing didn’t happen here in NZ.

We heard the Dunedin PI Wayne Idour (former Gang liaisons officer) story about Howard Broad Cops, Chickens & Blue movies.

The police insisted that sort of thing didn’t happen here in NZ. Sorry Howard in fact admits it did happen in his house, but he didn’t look. or bust any one for showing the illegal blue movies. A cop version of I toked but I did not inhale.

We heard it in the Christchurch Peter Ellis case.

The police insisted that this sort of thing didn’t happen here in NZ. Never mind one of the initial suspects was a member of the police guild and even got a scholarship named after them (which no doubt will be given the future children on top cops) as the relatives of leading politicians both red and blue collected massive ACC payout for claims as absurd as the children watched giraffes being murdered in suburban back yards. Never mind heard of giraffe roaming free across the Canterbury plains is not a thing. As meanwhile a detective heading the case was sleeping with cops. While another was later found in partnership with an associate of the Head Hunters.

Right now, another prominent Dunedin has named suppression for similar nasty movies. He stopped being my Facebook friend after I called him out for admitting he identified run away from gangs so that gangs could hunt them down. And after he boasted he could get anyone in the Pacific should they dare narc. Several of his friends are prominent lawyers one is believed to be a judge.

We heard it with David Bain, and we heard the Blair family say similar videos were found by Kerry before he went missing in the Sounds like Olivia Hope (daughter of the local Harbor Master) and Ben Smart. A case that even if we ignore the Swan presence, or the nasty video claims, which Dylan Blair only mentions much later*1, still smells.

– In fact, I later found a reference where Blair had brought this up before ever meeting me.

Especially if we focus on Cassels’s other associates More and more and evidence continues to grow indicating a long existing large-scale organized crime (involving a fleet of boats servicing the Pacific) network involved in money laundering and drugs washed through mains stream south-Island financial houses involved in building hotels and luxury property developments all assisted by dubious police work the more time goes on. In 2023 I undertook work for London investors who had issue with a former NZ merchant banker. His Pacific associates read like a Pacific Directory of Crime Inc my principal find which appeared in the London & US reports into the banker was mainstream banks never check the quality of work done by auditors. The banker associates in turn could be repeatedly named in association with repeated white-collar scandal including the Wine Box Inquiry, the Gang of 20 affair, Operation All Sorts and the Paradise and Panama Papers NZ, where senior parliamentarians routinely downplayed scale of the white-collar crime in action as they relied on the short-term memories of voters.

Hell, right now I have a relative who is a cash mule for wealthy Otago folk who like their cocaine. And I know for a fact one of those South Island clients, that this syndicate supplies, sibling was a very senior police officer. The rest are councilors, lawyers and bankers. These folk think they are above the law. The law protects them and only applies, when the police can be bothered, to the little people. And to a point they are right. Because the only reason shipments like the 12.5 million detained in Dunedin this week got found was not because of local law enforcement. (And Dunedin really not that big)

And in Southland I can go to Bluff and literally watch the Bandidos pull up next to the harbor pilot office, on any given week from the deck of a nearby house above the port.

These bust occurred because of offshore police work. The coke deals got pinged after the bad guys encrypted phones turned out to be not so encrypted. 600 million busted this year in Oz ( half the nations annual consumption) and since then 25 assassination on the Australian streets after cash was paid but no product got delivered. But don’t think that the top cops in this country had a single hand in that matter or the Dunedin cocaine bust one of two major NZ cocaine bust this month