NRL star Payne Haas, his dad Gregor and a trail of misery
Nine months ago, Gregor Haas was a single father of nine, juggling school-aged kids and a weekly 330km round-trip from his Gold Coast home to visit his partner in prison. Then it all came crashing down.
Barely nine months ago, Gregor Haas was a single father of nine, juggling school-aged children and a weekly 330km round-trip from his Gold Coast hinterland home to a Brisbane jail where his partner is being held on manslaughter charges over a fatal 2022 car accident.
His only real claim to fame was that his 23-year-old son Payne – a man-mountain with a tragic backstory – was a star player for the Brisbane Broncos NRL club.
“You go through a period of grieving, but then you move on,” Haas told The Daily Telegraph in August of his partner Uiatu “Joan” Taufua’s incarceration pending trial for the deaths of three people in a road accident in which she is alleged to have been drink driving.
“I don’t mean move on as in not being with Joan anymore, but life has to move on. The kids have to go to school. I have to work. Otherwise everything falls apart.”
Yet fall apart they have – in spectacular fashion – after the 46-year-old was arrested in The Philippines last week on an international arrest warrant linking him to the world’s most notorious narcotics syndicate, Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. And move on, he apparently did as well.
When Philippines authorities finally caught up with Haas on May 15, they found him holed up in an apartment on the island of Cebu with a new girlfriend. The two appeared to have met in Aklan Province, one Philippines official told The Weekend Australian, and later moved to her home town where they were sharing a flat with several of her siblings.
He is now being held in immigration detention in the capital Manila pending his extradition to Jakarta, where he faces serious drug-smuggling charges and, potentially, the death penalty.
“The apprehension of this high-profile fugitive sends a clear message: those who violate our laws and threaten public safety will be brought to justice,” Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said in a statement after Haas’ arrest on May 15.
Philippines Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco described Haas in a separate statement as “a high-profile fugitive for being an alleged member of the Sinaloa cartel, a large international organised crime syndicate based in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, that specialises in drug trafficking and money laundering activities”.
The cartel is among the largest drug trafficking organisations in the world, headed by infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman until his arrest in a Mexican shootout in January 2016.
Indonesia’s National Narcotics Board issued an Interpol Red Notice for Haas’s arrest in January after intercepting a package of floor tiles said to contain 5kg of crystal methamphetamine from Guadalajara, Mexico, in December it alleges was sent by Haas.
They say Haas was living on the hard-partying island of Gili Trawangan, near Lombok, where he owns the Coco Cabana resort with his brother Philip, when the parcel was first traced with the help of the US Drug Enforcement Agency on December 5.
By December 6, the Swiss-Filipino Australian had left Indonesia on a legal passport for Manila, where he stayed for several weeks in the upscale neighbourhood of Makati before moving on to Aklan Province, famed for the white-sands holiday island of Boracay, and then Cebu.
The devoted father was now an international fugitive, while back in Australia his children – the youngest just eight – were being cared for by relatives.
Fatal accidents
Most Australian rugby league fans would be familiar with the ongoing travails of the Haas family, a colourful Queensland clan whose lives have been upended by two fatal car accidents 23 years apart.
The first in 1999 when Joan was in the early stages of pregnancy with Payne and a passenger in the car, resulted in the death of a close friend and the permanent disability of the couple’s five-month-old son Chace whose spinal cord was snapped in the impact.
Chace was a ventilated quadriplegic up until his sudden death, aged 21, in August 2020 from respiratory failure. The family was devastated.
Payne Lucky Haas had been named for the “pain and suffering” the accident had caused the family, but also for the good fortune they had experienced, Joan explained in an interview in the wake of Chace’s death.
The young man was reportedly laid to rest on his family’s seven-hectare property in a gold-plated coffin inside a mausoleum inspired by his love for Egyptian history and the Spartans.
Then in December 2022 a second car crash, this time with Joan behind the wheel of her black Mercedes wagon, caused the deaths of Susan Zimmer, 70, her partner Chris Fawcett, 79, and her daughter Steffanie Zimmer, 35.
“To be honest, seeing my wife in jail … what can I say, mate … it’s just f..ked,” Haas said publicly last August.
“As a family, we have gone into our little shell in life. We have our little family unit and it’s my job to ensure the kids are safe and happy.
“I’m trying to stay as busy as I can. I do what I can to keep my mind off things.”
‘Bit of a wild west’
If Gili Trawangan really was home to Gregor Johann Haas in the months before he went on the run, the towering and heavily -tattooed Australian made little impression on the island’s locals – few of whom could recall meeting a man Indonesia considers one of its most-wanted drug criminals.
At the Coco Cabana on the north side of the island, manager Hadi who returned to the hotel just last month after a two-year hiatus remembers meeting Haas in 2022 after the resort changed hands but says he deals mostly with his brother Philip who runs the hotel from his base on Lombok island or Yogyakarta.
Gili T, as it is known, has a reputation as a “bit of a wild west”, one Australian business owner on nearby Bali told The Weekend Australian, with a big drug scene and little law enforcement.
The island, favoured by young Australian tourists, is said to be largely controlled by a local land mafia that extorts rent from foreign business owners.
Yet Haas apparently stood out in The Philippines, making it that much easier for the immigration police officers sent to track him down.
“He stands out in a crowd because he is bigger than everyone else here,” Philippines Immigration Bureau spokeswoman Dana Sandoval told The Weekend Australian.
“When people see him, they notice him. So when our officers conducted investigations, they could follow his tracks from Manila.”
Immigration officials weren’t the only ones on Haas’s tail. The Weekend Australian understands US Drug Enforcement Agency officers helped first detect the 5kg parcel of crystal meth, and then trace Haas’s movements across Southeast Asia to his eventual hideout in the small coastal city of Bogo in central Cebu in co-operation with Filipino and Indonesian investigators.
The Australian Federal Police says it played no part in Haas’s arrest – unsurprising given the backlash it faced for its role in helping Indonesian police apprehend the Bali Nine in April 2005.
All nine Australians were convicted of attempting to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Indonesia to Australia. The two ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were sentenced to death and executed in 2015.
While the AFP established new guidelines in the wake of that backlash, it has always defended its actions.
ANU international law professor Donald Rothwell says Haas would “certainly have been on the AFP’s radar” after Indonesia issued an Interpol Red Notice for his arrest, and possibly before that if the Queensland man was indeed the highly connected narcotics smuggler Indonesia has alleged.
“Awareness is one thing. The more important issue is what level of co-operation or collaboration the AFP may have had with Indonesia in bringing about Haas’s eventual arrest,” says Rothwell.
Indonesian police have urged The Philippines to “immediately” deport Haas to assist their investigations into his alleged cartel links – information they say came from a drug courier arrested in relation to the illicit Mexican shipment.
“We will ask him to reveal his network in Indonesia and other places. He used to move a lot, not only in Indonesia but other countries as well,” the country’s narcotics police bureau spokesman, Sulistyo Pudjo Hartono, said of Haas this week.
Haas has vowed to fight the charges, according to his Sydney lawyer Abdul Reslan, who also acts for his partner Joan.
Dana Sandoval told The Weekend Australian he has a legal right to do so but that “once he’s been deemed a fugitive by another government, then he is automatically an undesirable alien to us”.
“More likely than not that person will be deported from the Philippines,” she said.
The only delay would be if Haas is charged with criminal offences in The Philippines for which he must stand trial there, though there were no indications of that.
Haas’s deportation hearing before a panel of three immigration board commissioners is likely to be held next month. That would ordinarily mean his extradition will take place by August.
But this is no ordinary case given the diplomatic ramifications, Sandoval admits, and the Philippines government will continue talking with both the Australian and Indonesian governments in the coming weeks over how to proceed.
Australia’s bilateral ties with The Philippines have rarely been better than under current President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, who has looked to Canberra and Washington for support in his country’s David and Goliath battle with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea.
Manila, a signatory to an international agreement prohibiting extradition that may lead to execution, will be reluctant to upset the balance in that relationship.
Equally, Canberra will need to tread carefully with Indonesia – our largest and most important neighbour – whose co-operation on issues such as transnational crime and counter-terrorism are vital to Australia’s own security.
Anthony Albanese has said Haas will be given consular assistance, like any other Australian in trouble overseas, and that his government opposes the death penalty.
“That remains our position and we always make representations. It is, of course, at a very early stage of these accusations which have been made,” he said.
So far, says Sandoval, there have been no “deeper discussions” on whether Indonesia might be prepared to take the death penalty off the table, or allow Haas to be deported instead to Australia.
“But I wouldn’t be surprised if that was raised by both parties at a later date,” she said.
“I think that could be part of the later discussion. What we are more concerned about now is Haas’s presence in our country.”
Smuggling hub
For those with even a passing knowledge of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle and its notoriety as one of the world’s biggest methamphetamine production hubs, it’s hard to see why anyone would need to travel to Mexico to source a product so readily available on Indonesia’s doorstep.
Whether Indonesian police have sufficient evidence to back their allegations that Gregor Haas really is an international narcotics smuggler is far from clear, though there are certainly signs the Mexican cartels have been looking to establish a foothold in Indonesia.
“They are starting to have a larger presence but they haven’t established a foothold yet,” according to one Indonesia-based official with close knowledge of the investigation.
“At this point we know there’s a lot more Hispanic presence in Southeast Asia. There’s a large market here that’s not being tapped and they’re trying to get into it. They’re in competition with China.”
Three Mexican hit men with cartel ties were arrested in Bali in January and charged with attempted murder following a shootout in Badung Regency. A fourth was picked up in February.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.
Back in Australia, Broncos star prop Payne Haas has his own juggling act to balance, caring for two of his school-aged brothers alongside his own three-year-old daughter while managing the intense pressure that comes with any NRL season.
He has had little to say about his father’s legal dilemmas, beyond his March explanation that his dad had moved overseas to focus on businesses there.
But at the gate of his overcrowded Manila detention facility this week, where he was waiting to receive a care package from his Filipina girlfriend, Gregor Haas had a message for his famous son.
He was sorry and he loved him, he said.
Additional reporting: Ayu Mandala
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