BANGKOK - 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, 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, 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.
The
crime network is also less prone to uncontrolled outbreaks of internecine
violence than the Latin cartels, police say. The money is so big that
long-standing, blood-soaked rivalries among Asian crime groups have been set
aside in a united pursuit of gargantuan profits.
“The
crime groups in Southeast Asia and the Far East operate with seamless
efficiency,” says one veteran Western anti-drugs official. “They function like
a global corporation.”
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.
A TRIP,
A TRAP
Tse Chi
Lop was born in Guangdong Province, in southern China, and grew up during
China’s Cultural Revolution. Amid the bloody purges, forced labor camps and
mass starvation, a group of imprisoned members of Mao’s Red Guard in the
southern city of Guangzhou formed a triad-like criminal enterprise called the
Big Circle Gang. Tse later became a member of the group, say police, and like
many of his Big Circle Gang brethren moved to Hong Kong, then further afield as
they sought sanctuaries for their criminal activities. He arrived in Canada in
1988.
In the
1990s, Tse shuttled between North America, Hong Kong, Macau and Southeast Asia,
said a senior AFP investigator based in Asia. He rose to become a mid-ranking
member of a smuggling ring that sourced heroin from the Golden Triangle, the
lawless opium-producing region where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, China
and Laos meet.
In 1998,
according to court records, Tse was arraigned on drug-trafficking charges in
the Eastern District Court of New York. He was found guilty of conspiracy to
import heroin into America, the records show. A potential life sentence hung
over his head.
Through
a petition filed by his lawyer in 2000, Tse begged for leniency.
His
ailing parents needed constant care, he explained. His 12-year-old son had a
lung disorder. His wife was overwhelmed. If freed, vowed Tse, he would open a
restaurant. He expressed “great sorrow” for his crime, court records show.
The
entreaties appear to have worked: Tse was sentenced to nine years in prison,
spent mostly at the federal correctional institution in Elkton, Ohio. But his
remorse may have waned.
After he
was freed in 2006, police say he returned to Canada, where he was supposed to
be under supervised release for the next four years. It’s unclear when Tse
returned to his old haunts in Asia. But corporate records show that Tse and his
wife registered a business, the China Peace Investment Group Company Ltd, in
Hong Kong in 2011.
Police
suspect Tse quickly returned to the drug game. He “picked up where he left
off,” said the senior AFP investigator. Tse tapped connections in mainland
China, Hong Kong, Macau and the Golden Triangle, and adopted a business model
that proved irresistible to his customers, say law enforcers. If one of his
drug deliveries was intercepted by police, it was replaced at no extra cost, or
deposits were returned to the buyers.
His
policy of guaranteeing his drug deliveries was good for business, but it also
put him on the radar of police. In 2011, AFP officers cracked a group in
Melbourne importing heroin and meth. The amounts were not huge - dozens of
kilos. So, rather than arrest the Australian drug dealers, police put them
under surveillance, tapping their phones and observing them closely for more
than a year. To the frustration of the Australian drug cell, their illicit
product kept getting intercepted. They wanted the seized drugs replaced by the
syndicate.
The
syndicate bosses in Hong Kong were irate - their other drug rings in Australia
were collecting their narcotics and selling them without incident. In 2013, as
the patience of the syndicate leaders wore thin, they summoned the leader of
the Melbourne cell to Hong Kong for talks. There, Hong Kong police watched the
Australian meet two men.
One of
the men was Tse Chi Lop. He had the center-parted hair and casual fashion sense
of a typical middle-aged Chinese family man, said one AFP agent. However,
further surveillance showed Tse was a big spender with a keen regard for his
personal security. At home and abroad, he was protected by a guard of Thai
kickboxers, said three AFP investigators. Up to eight worked for him at a time,
and they were regularly rotated as part of his security protocol.
Tse
would host lavish birthday parties each year at resorts and five-star hotels,
flying in his family and entourage in private jets. On one occasion, he stayed
at a resort in Thailand for a month, hosting visitors poolside in shorts and a
T-shirt, according to a member of the task force investigating the syndicate.
Tse was
a frequent visitor to Asia’s casinos and fond of betting on horses, especially
on English races. “We believe he lost 60 million euros (about $66 million) in
one night on the tables in Macau,” said the senior Asia-based AFP investigator.
As the
investigation into Tse deepened, police suspected that the Canadian was the
major trafficker supplying Australia with meth and heroin, with a lucrative
sideline in MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy. But the true scale and breadth of
the Sam Gor syndicate only became apparent in late 2016, police say, when a
young Taiwanese man entered Yangon airport with a bag of white powder strapped
to each of his thighs.
‘ALADDIN’S
CAVE OF INTEL’
Cai Jeng
Ze was heading home to Taiwan, walking through the airport with a Jimmy Choo
leather bag and two mobile phones. It was the morning of November 15, 2016, and
Cai seemed nervous, picking at his blistered hands. This tic aroused suspicion,
said a former Myanmar police commander who oversaw the investigation. “His
hands were bad because he had been handling the drugs,” the commander told
Reuters. “Methamphetamine is very toxic.”
Cai was
stopped and searched. Taped to each of his thighs was a small bag containing 80
grams of ketamine, a powerful tranquilizer that doubles as a party drug. “We
were very fortunate to arrest him. Actually, it was an accident,” the commander
said. Myanmar police, tipped off by the DEA, had been monitoring Cai. But they
had lost track of him. Airport police had no idea who he was.
Cai told
airport police the bag on his thigh contained a “pesticide or vitamin for
flowers and plants,” according to Myanmar court records from his trial for
ketamine trafficking. A friend, said Cai, had given it to him to pass on to his
father. Cai’s flight was about to leave and there was no drug test for ketamine
at the airport, the commander said.
Unimpressed
with the explanation, police held him overnight. The next day, anti-narcotic
officers turned up at the airport. One recognized him from surveillance work
he’d been conducting.
Still,
Cai refused to talk. Police say that videos they later found on one of his
phones might have explained his silence. The videos showed a crying and bound
man, and at least three assailants taking turns burning his feet with a
blowtorch and electrocuting him with a cattle prod. In the videos, said one
investigator, a sign can be seen with Chinese calligraphy saying “Loyalty to
the Heavens.” The banner was a “triad-related sign,” he added.
The
tortured man, according to two AFP officers who viewed the video, claimed to
have thrown 300 kg of meth from a boat because he mistakenly believed a
fast-approaching vessel was a law enforcement boat. The torturers were testing
the veracity of the victim’s claims. By filming and sharing the videos, triad
members were sending a message about the price of disloyalty, the officers
said. Reuters has not seen the video.
The
torture videos were just one of the items allegedly found in Cai’s two iPhones.
The alleged Taiwanese trafficker was a diligent chronicler of the drug
syndicate’s activities, but sloppy when it came to information security. Inside
the phones, police say, was a huge photo and video gallery, social media
conversations, and logs of thousands of calls and text messages.
They
were “an Aladdin’s Cave of intel,” said one AFP commander based in North Asia.
For at
least two months prior to his arrest, Cai allegedly traveled around Myanmar
cobbling together a huge meth deal for the syndicate, according to a PowerPoint
presentation by the Drug Enforcement Division of the Myanmar police outlining
its investigation. One telling discovery: a screenshot of a slip from an
international courier company recording the delivery of two consignments of
packaging, manufactured to hold loose-leaf Chinese tea, to a Yangon address.
Since at least 2012, tea packets, often containing one kilo of crystal meth
each, had been cropping up in drug busts across the Asia-Pacific region.
Two days
after Cai’s arrest, Myanmar police raided a Yangon address, where they seized
622 kilograms of ketamine. That evening, they captured 1.1 tonnes of crystal
meth at a Yangon jetty. The interception of the drugs was a coup. Even so,
Myanmar police were frustrated. Nine people were arrested, but other than Cai
they were lower-level members of the syndicate, including couriers and a
driver. And Cai still wasn't talking.
Then
came a major breakthrough. Swiping through the gallery of photos and videos on
Cai’s phones, an AFP investigator based in Yangon noticed a familiar face from
an intelligence briefing he had attended on Asian drug traffickers about a year
earlier. “This one stuck out because it was Canadian,” he recalled. “I said:
‘Fuck, I know who you are!'”
It was
Tse Chi Lop.
The
Myanmar police invited the AFP to send a team of intelligence analysts to
Yangon in early 2017. They went to work on Cai’s phones.
Australia
had been a profitable drug market for Asian crime gangs since the end of the
Vietnam War. For at least a decade, the AFP had fed all its historic files on
drug cases, large and small, into a database. A senior Chinese
counter-narcotics agent described the database, which includes a trove of
names, chemical signatures of seized drugs, phone metadata and surveillance
intel, as the most impressive cache of intelligence on Asian drug trafficking
groups in the region.
The AFP
analysts cross-referenced the contents of Cai’s phones with the database. They
discovered photos related to three big consignments of crystal meth that were
intercepted in China, Japan and New Zealand in 2016, according to investigators
and Myanmar police documents. Later, a team of Chinese anti-narcotics officials
connected photos, telephone numbers and addresses in Cai’s phones to other meth
busts in China.
For
regional counter-narcotics police, the revelations upended their assumption
that the drugs were being trafficked by different crime groups. It became clear
the shipments were the work of just one organization. A senior Chinese
anti-narcotics agent said they believed Cai was “one of the members of a mega-syndicate,”
which had been involved in multiple “drugs cases, smuggling and manufacturing,
within this region.”
Cai was
found not guilty in the ketamine case, but is still in jail in Yangon, where he
is on trial for drug trafficking charges related to the meth seizures. Reuters
was unable to contact Cai’s lawyer.
METH
PARADISE
During
his time in Myanmar, Cai is suspected of traversing the country, testing drug
samples, organizing couriers and obtaining a fishing boat to transport the
illicit cargo to a bigger vessel in international waters, according to police
and the Myanmar PowerPoint document. His phones contained pictures of the
vehicles to be used to transport the meth, the spot where the meth was to be
dropped off, and the fishing boat.
The
police reconstruction of Cai’s dealings in Myanmar led to another major
revelation: The epicenter of meth production had shifted from China’s southern
provinces to Shan State in Myanmar’s northeastern borderlands. Operating in
China had provided the Sam Gor syndicate with easy access to precursor
ingredients, such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, that were smuggled out of
pharmaceutical, chemical and paint factories in the Pearl River Delta Economic
Zone. Shan gave Sam Gor the freedom to operate largely unimpeded by law
enforcement.
Armed
rebel groups in semi-autonomous regions like Shan State have long controlled
large tracts of territory and used drug revenues to finance their frequent
battles with the military. A series of detentes brokered by the Myanmar
government with rebel groups over the years has brought relative calm to the region
- and allowed illicit drug activities to flourish.
“Production
facilities can be hidden from law enforcement and other prying eyes but
insulated from disruptive violence,” analyst Richard Horsey wrote in a paper
this year for the International Crisis Group. “Drug production and profits are
now so vast that they dwarf the formal sector of Shan state.”
The
Myanmar government and police did not respond to questions from Reuters.
Along
the road to the village of Loikan in Shan State, there is evidence of
drug-fueled prosperity. The two-lane road skirts a deep ravine known as the
“Valley of Death,” where ethnic Kachin rebels from the Kaung Kha paramilitary
group clashed for decades with Myanmar’s army. Now, high-end SUVs thunder past
trucks carrying building materials and workers.
The
Kaung Kha militia’s immaculate and expansive new headquarters sits on a plateau
nestled between the steep green hills of the jagged Loi Sam Sip range. About
six kilometers away, near Loikan village, was a sprawling drug facility carved
out of thick forest. Police and locals say the complex churned out vast
quantities of crystal meth, heroin, ketamine and yaba tablets - a cheaper form
of meth that is mixed with caffeine. When it was raided in early 2018, security
forces seized more than 200,000 liters of precursor chemicals, as well as
10,000 kg of caffeine and 73,550 kg of sodium hydroxide - all substances used
in drug production.
The
Loikan facility was “very likely” to have been the source of much of the Sam
Gor syndicate’s meth, said the Yangon-based AFP officer.
“Some
militia were involved in the lab,” said Oi Khun, a communications officer for
the 3,000-strong Kaung Kha militia, in an interview. He paused, then added:
“But not with the knowledge of senior members” of the militia.
One
person in Loikan described how workers from the lab would come down from the
hills. The men, like most of the villagers, were ethnic Chinese. But they
dressed better than the locals, had foreign accents, and had a foul smell about
them.
“I asked
them once. ‘Why don’t you bathe?’” the person said. “They said they did, but
there was nothing they could do about the smell.”
The rank
chemicals used to cook the meth had seeped into the skin of the men, who seemed
unperturbed that the signature stench might reveal their illicit activities.
“We all knew,” the person said. “We just didn’t talk about it. That just brings
you danger.”
Meth lab
managers and chemists are mostly Taiwan nationals, say Thai police. So, too,
are many of the crime network’s couriers and boat crews who transport the drugs
across the Asia-Pacific.
Shan’s
super-labs produce the purest crystal meth in the world, the senior Chinese
counter-narcotics official told Reuters. “They can take it slow and spread (the
meth) out on the ground and let it dry.”
The
UNODC estimates the Asia-Pacific retail market for meth is worth between $30.3
and $61.4 billion annually. The business model for meth is “very different” to
heroin, said the UNODC’s Douglas. “Inputs are relatively cheap, a large
workforce is not needed, the price per kilo is higher, and profits are
therefore far, far higher.”
The
wholesale price of a kilo of crystal meth produced in northeastern Myanmar is
as little as $1,800, according to a UNODC report citing the China National
Narcotics Control Commission. Average retail prices for crystal meth, according
to the UN agency, are equivalent to $70,500 per kilo in Thailand, $298,000 per
kilo in Australia and $588,000 in Japan. For the Japanese market, that’s more
than a three-hundred-fold mark-up.
The money
the syndicate is making “means that if they lose ten tonnes and one goes
through, they still make a big profit,” said the Chinese counter-narcotics
official. “They can afford failure. It doesn’t matter.”
‘MONEY,
MONEY’
The
analysis of Cai’s phones was continuing to provide leads. On them, police say
they found the GPS coordinates of the pick-up point in the Andaman Sea where
fishing boats laden with Myanmar meth were meeting drug motherships capable of
being at sea for weeks.
One of
the motherships was a Taiwanese trawler called the Shun de Man 66, according to
the Taiwanese law enforcement document reviewed by Reuters. The vessel was
already at sea when, in early July 2017, Joshua Joseph Smith walked into a
marine broker in the Western Australian capital of Perth and paid $A350,000
(about $265,000 at the time) for the MV Valkoista, a fishing charter boat.
Smith, who was in his mid-40s and hailed from the east coast of Australia,
inquired about sea sickness tablets. According to local media, he didn’t have a
fishing license at the time.
After
buying the boat on July 7, Smith set the Valkoista on a course straight from
the marina to meet the Shun De Man 66 in the Indian Ocean, an AFP police
commander said. After the rendezvous, the Valkoista then sailed to the remote
Western Australian port city of Geraldton on July 11, where its crew was seen
“unloading a lot of packages” into a van, the commander said.
“We knew
we had an importation. We know the methodology of organized crime networks. We
know if a ship leaves empty and comes back with some gear on it, that it hasn’t
just dropped from the sky in the middle of the ocean.”
Investigators
checked CCTV footage and hotel, plane and car hire records. The phones of some
of the Australian drug traffickers were tapped. It soon became apparent, police
say, that some of Smith’s alleged co-conspirators were members of an ethnic
Lebanese underworld gang, as well as the Hells Angels and Comanchero motorcycle
gangs, known as “bikies” in Australia.
As they
put together their deal to import 1.2 tonnes of crystal meth into Australia,
Smith's associates met with Sam Gor syndicate members in Bangkok in August
2017, according to a copy of an AFP document reviewed by Reuters. The
Australians reconvened in Perth a month later.
Bikers
may have a reputation for wild clubhouse parties and a self-styled mythology as
outsiders, but these Australians had refined tastes. They flew business class,
stayed in five-star hotels and dined at the finest restaurants, according to
police investigators and local media reports. One of those restaurants, said
the AFP commander, was the Rockpool Bar & Grill in Perth. The restaurant
offered a 104-page wine list and a menu that included caviar with toast at
about $185 per serving.
On
November 27, 2017, the Shun De Man 66 set sail again, this time from Singapore.
The vessel headed north into the Andaman Sea to rendezvous with a smaller boat
bringing the meth from Myanmar. The Shun De Man then sailed along the west
coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and dropped down to the Indian Ocean.
The
Indonesian navy watched and the AFP listened.
When the
Shun De Man finally met again with the Valkoista in international waters off
the West Australian coast on December 19, an Asian voice could be heard
shouting “money, money,” according to the commander and local media reports.
The Shun De Man’s crew had one half of a torn Hong Kong dollar bill. Smith and
his crew had the other half. The Australian buyers proved their identity by
matching their portion to the fragment held by the crew of the Shun De Man, who
then handed over the meth.
The
Valkoista arrived in the Australian port city of Geraldton following a two-day
return journey in rough seas. The men unloaded the drugs in the pre-dawn dark.
Masked members of the AFP and Western Australian police moved in with assault
weapons and seized the drugs and the men. Smith pleaded guilty to importing a
commercial quantity of an illegal drug. Some of his alleged associates are
still on trial.
Taiwan’s
Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau said it had “worked together with our
counterparts on the investigation” of the Shun De Man 66 and that this had led
to the “substantial seizure of illicit narcotics” by the Australian authorities
in December 2017. The bureau said it was “aware that Taiwanese syndicates have
participated in maritime drug trafficking in (the) Asia-Pacific region,” and
was working “collaboratively and closely with our counterparts to disrupt these
syndicates and cross-border drug trafficking.”
NIMBLE,
ELUSIVE, UNFAZED
As the
investigation into the syndicate deepened, police concluded that crime groups
from across the region had undergone a kind of mega-merger to form Sam Gor. The
members include the three biggest Hong Kong and Macau triads, who spent much of
the 1990s in open warfare: 14K, Wo Shing Wo and Sun Yee On. The other two are
the Big Circle Gang, Tse’s original triad, and the Bamboo Union, based in
Taiwan. In the words of one investigator, the syndicate’s supply chain is so
complex and expertly run that it “must rival Apple’s.”
“The
syndicate has a lot of money and there is a vast market to tap,” said Jay Li
Chien-chih, a Taiwanese police senior colonel who has been stationed in
Southeast Asia for a decade. “The power this network possesses is
unimaginable.”
Investigators
have had wins. In February last year, police busted the Loikan super-lab in
Myanmar, where they found enough tea-branded packaging for 10 tonnes of meth.
The Shun De Man 66 was intercepted that month by the Indonesian navy with more
than one tonne of meth aboard. In March 2018, a key Sam Gor lieutenant was
arrested in Cambodia and extradited to Myanmar. In December, the compound of
Sue Songkittikul, a suspected syndicate operations chief, was raided in
Thailand.
Located
near the border with Myanmar, the moat-ringed compound had a small meth lab, which
police suspected was used to experiment with new recipes; a powerful radio
tower with a 100-km range; and an underground tunnel from the main house to the
back of the property.
Sue
wasn’t there, but property and money from 38 bank accounts linked to him and
totaling some $9 million were seized during the investigation. Sue is still at
large.
But the
flow of drugs leaving the Golden Triangle for the wider Asia-Pacific seems to
have increased. Seizures of crystal meth and yaba rose about 50% last year to
126 tonnes in East and Southeast Asia. At the same time, prices for the drugs
fell in most countries. This pattern of falling prices and rising seizures, the
UNODC said in a report released in March 2019, “suggested the supply of the
drug had expanded.”
In the
Sam Gor syndicate, police face a nimble and elusive adversary. When authorities
had success stopping the drug motherships, police said, Sam Gor switched to
hiding its product in shipping containers. When Thailand stopped much of the
meth coming directly across the border from Myanmar by truck, the syndicate
re-routed deliveries through Laos and Vietnam. This included deploying hordes
of Laotians with backpacks, each containing about 30 kilos of meth, to carry it
into Thailand on narrow jungle paths.
Over the
years, police have had little success in taking down Asia’s drug lords. Some of
the suspected syndicate leaders have been involved in drug trafficking for
decades, according to the AFP target list. The last time a top-level Asian
narcotics kingpin was successfully prosecuted and imprisoned for more than a
short period was in the mid-1970s. That’s when Ng Sik-ho, a wily Hong Kong drug
trafficker known as Limpy Ho, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for smuggling
more than 20 tonnes of opium and morphine, according to court records.
So far,
Tse has avoided Limpy Ho’s fate. He is being tracked, and all the signs are he
knows it, say counter-narcotics agents. Despite the heat, some police say they
believe he is continuing his drug operations, unfazed.
***Reporting
by Tom Allard. Additional reporting by Reuters Staff. Editing by Peter
Hirschberg.