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 US$66 million in a single night at a Macau casino.
But meth - a highly addictive drug with devastating physical and mental effects on long-term users - is its main business, they say. Tse, 55, is the prime target of Operation Kungur, a sprawling, previously unreported counter-narcotics investigation. Led by the Australian Federal Police , Operation Kungur involves about 20 agencies from Asia, North America and Europe.
A Taiwanese law enforcement flow chart identifies Tse as the"Multinational CEO" of the syndicate. A US Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence document shared with regional government agencies says Tse is"believed to be" the leader of the Sam Gor syndicate.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.
Reuters spoke to militia leaders in Myanmar's Shan State, the heart of South-east 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. 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.
A TRIP, A TRAP Tse was born in Guangdong Province, in southern China, and grew up during China's Cultural Revolution. Amid the bloody purges, forced labour 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.
If freed, vowed Tse, he would open a restaurant. He expressed"great sorrow" for his crime, court records show. 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.
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