An Auckland businessman, who threatened to poison baby formula bound for China in a bid to blackmail New Zealand’s multi-billion US dollar dairy industry, was yesterday jailed for more than eight years.
Jeremy Kerr, 60, pleaded guilty to two counts of blackmail after sending threatening letters containing a pesticide called 1080 to dairy giant Fonterra and the NZ Farmer’s Federation in 2014.
In the letters, he threatened to lace baby formula destined for various markets — with China the only nation specifically named — unless New Zealand stopped using 1080.
The threat to supplies bound for China, a major importer of Kiwi baby formula, was not initially disclosed publicly by New Zealand authorities, who tightened access to baby powder in domestic shops.
They also launched a massive investigation into the threat to New Zealand’s dairy sector, which was worth NZ$11.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) last year, making it the nation’s biggest export earner.
Police interviewed 2,600 people, eventually arresting Kerr last year after DNA evidence linked him to the letters.
Prosecutors said he owned the rights to a pesticide that was a market rival to 1080 and would gain financially if a ban was implemented.
A New Zealand High Court hearing last month was told that he was under financial pressure and suffering mental health problems following his wife’s death when the threats were made.
He told police after his arrest that reference to the Chinese market was just to “add some impact,” the hearing was told. Judge Geoffrey Venning accepted Kerr never meant to carry out the poison threat, but said it was still one of the most serious cases of blackmail to come before the courts.
He said the threat could have jeopardized trade relations and had cost affected parties NZ$32 million, including the police investigation and security measures implemented by Fonterra.
Adding that the maximum term for blackmail is 14 years, Venning sentenced Kerr to eight-and-a-half years in jail.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late