Asset restraint is increasingly being used as a tool for fighting organised crime in the Southern police district.
Documents released under the Official Information Act show the number of cases in which assets have been restrained went from one a year in 2016 to seven in 2020.
The value of assets restrained hit the $1 million mark in 2018 and reached $8.7 million in 2019.
Though there was a drop in the value of assets restrained in 2020, assets were frozen in seven cases.
The majority of high-value asset seizures came from drug-related crime.
Since the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act came into force in 2009, more than $21 million worth of assets have been frozen in the 10 highest-value asset restraint cases in the South.
Six of the 10 cases were primarily related to cannabis offences, though in the biggest it was a fraudster who had the most assets frozen.
Dunedin businessman Paul Clarke, who plead guilty to using altered documents to dodge customs duties last year, had $8.6million worth of assets restrained.
The asset recovery unit (ARU), working with Customs, restrained 18 motorcycles, 12 vehicles, two commercial and three residential properties connected to the case in 2019.
Southern police were the main partner agency of the ARU on two high-value cannabis-related cases in which assets were restrained last year.
Operation Tahakopa in mid-December led to three properties, one of which was residential, and about $3.6 million restrained.
In April, a bank account, seven vehicles and five properties, four of which were residential, worth about $3.2 million in total, were restrained in Operation Chanute.
Over the past five years, asset restraints had been applied for in 17 cases across the southern police district.
All applications were successful and a total of 73 assets were restrained.
ARU manager Detective Inspector Craig Hamilton said the vast majority of assets restrained in New Zealand were later forfeited and put back into initiatives that served the wider community.
The goal was to make New Zealand the hardest place for criminal businesses to operate and the safest place to live, he said.
The southern district now had its own dedicated investigator and police were aiming to build on that.
There had been a global shift towards policing the profits of crime and sending the message that crime did not pay as a long-term enterprise.
Police wanted community members to speak up about people making money off the proceeds of crime so they could continue to act.
