(Tom Allard’s article from the REUTERS on October-14, 2019.)
He is Asia’s most-wanted man. He is protected by a guard
of Thai kickboxers. He flies by private jet. And, police say, he once lost $66
million in a single night at a Macau casino.
Tse Chi Lop, a Canadian national born in China, is suspected of leading a vast multinational drug trafficking syndicate formed out of an alliance of five of Asia’s triad groups, according to law enforcement officials. Its members call it simply “The Company.” Police, in a nod to one of Tse’s nicknames, have dubbed it Sam Gor, Cantonese for “Brother Number Three.”
The syndicate,
law enforcers believe, is funneling tonnes of methamphetamine, heroin and
ketamine to at least a dozen countries from Japan in North Asia to New Zealand
in the South Pacific. But meth – a highly addictive drug with devastating
physical and mental effects on long-term users – is its main business, they
say.
In what it calls
a conservative estimate, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
puts the Sam Gor syndicate’s meth revenue in 2018 at $8 billion a year, but
says it could be as high as $17.7 billion. The UN agency estimates that the
cartel, which often conceals its drugs in packets of tea, has a 40% to 70%
share of the wholesale regional meth market that has expanded at least fourfold
in the past five years.
This
unprecedented boom in meth production has triggered an unprecedented response,
Reuters has learned. Tse, 55, is the prime target of Operation Kungur, a
sprawling, previously unreported counter-narcotics investigation. Led by the
Australian Federal Police (AFP), Operation Kungur involves about 20 agencies
from Asia, North America and Europe.
It is by far the
biggest ever international effort to combat Asian drug trafficking syndicates,
say law enforcement agents involved in the investigation. It encompasses
authorities from Myanmar (Burma), China, Thailand, Japan, the United States and
Canada. Taiwan, while not formally part of the operation, is assisting in the
investigation.
A document
containing AFP profiles of the operation’s top 19 syndicate targets, reviewed
by Reuters, identifies Tse as the leader of the syndicate. According to the
document, the organization has “been connected with or directly involved in at
least 13 cases” of drug trafficking since January 2015. The document does not
provide specific details of the cases.
A Taiwanese law enforcement flow chart identifies Tse as the “Multinational CEO” of the syndicate. A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intelligence document shared with regional government agencies says Tse is “believed to be” the leader of the Sam Gor syndicate.
Police have not
publicly identified Tse as the suspected boss of the trafficking group. Some
investigators say that the scope of the syndicate’s operation puts Tse, as the
suspected leader, on par with Latin America’s most legendary narco-traffickers.
“Tse Chi Lop is in the league of El Chapo or maybe Pablo Escobar,” said Jeremy
Douglas, Southeast Asia and Pacific representative for UNODC. “The word kingpin
often gets thrown around, but there is no doubt it applies here.”
Reuters was
unable to contact Tse Chi Lop. In response to questions from Reuters, the AFP,
the DEA and Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau said they would
not comment on investigations.
During the past
year, Reuters crisscrossed the Asia-Pacific to uncover the story of Tse and his
Sam Gor network. This included interviews with more than two dozen law
enforcement officials from eight countries, and reviews of intelligence reports
from police and anti-narcotics agencies, court filings and other documents.
Reuters spoke to militia leaders in Myanmar’s Shan
State, the heart of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle of Burma, where the
syndicate is suspected of mass producing drugs in so-called super-labs. Reuters
reporters also visited the Thai compound of one of the syndicate’s alleged drug
lords.
What emerges is
a portrait of an organization that is truly transnational. Four of the 19 Sam
Gor syndicate leaders on the AFP list are Canadian citizens, including Tse,
whom police often refer to as “T1” - the top target. Others hail from Hong
Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and mainland China.
The syndicate is
enormously wealthy, disciplined and sophisticated - in many ways more
sophisticated than any Latin American cartel, say anti-narcotics officials. Sam
Gor supplies a bigger, more dispersed drug market and collaborates with a more
diverse range of local crime groups than the Latin cartels do, including
Japan’s Yakuza, Australia's biker gangs and ethnic Chinese gangs across
Southeast Asia.
Like most of the
law enforcement agents Reuters interviewed, the investigator spoke on condition
of anonymity. In addition to the contrasts between their drug operations,
there’s another, more personal, difference between Tse Chi Lop and Joaquin ‘El
Chapo’ Guzman or Pablo Escobar.
The jailed
Mexican cartel boss and the deceased Colombian cocaine trafficker have been
feted in song and on screen for their extravagant lifestyles and extreme
violence. Precious little has been revealed about Tse’s life and career. Unlike
the Latin drug lords, Tse is relatively discreet - and still free.
Tse Chi Lop is
suspected by law enforcement agencies of running Asia’s biggest drug network,
which distributes high-grade meth across the region that is often hidden in
loose-leaf tea packaging. Police have raided some of the syndicate’s
operations, but that hasn’t stemmed the overall flow of meth.
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| Australia has a serious problem with ICE (Crystal Meth). |
Meth-King Tse Chi Lop: Chinese El Chapo (Part-2)