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SYDNEY: The alleged head of Asia’s largest criminal syndicate and one of the world’s most wanted men has been arrested in the Netherlands, and Australian authorities are pushing for his extradition to be prosecuted.
Police had been pursuing alleged drug lord Tse Chi Lop, 57, for years until he was arrested by Dutch police on Friday (January 22) at the request of the Australian federal police.
In a statement on Sunday, Australian authorities said a man “of great interest” to law enforcement had been detained. A police spokeswoman confirmed her name as Tse Chi Lop.
The Chinese-born Canadian citizen has been compared to the Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
He has been named by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as the alleged leader of the Asian mega-cartel known as “Sam Gor”, a major global producer and supplier of methamphetamine.
Sam Gor is believed to launder his billions in drug money through businesses arising in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, including casinos, hotels and real estate.
Australia’s federal police said Friday’s arrest followed an operation that in 2012 and 2013 caught 27 people linked to a crime syndicate spanning five countries.
READ: ‘They’re all high, are they going to arrest everyone? Southeast Asian students and the appeal of drugs in Australia
The group was accused of importing “substantial amounts of heroin and methamphetamine” into Australia, a lucrative market for drug traffickers.
“The union targeted Australia for several years, importing and distributing large quantities of illicit narcotics, laundering the proceeds abroad and living off the wealth obtained from crime,” Australian police said.
As part of the 2012-2013 raids in Melbourne, the police seized assets worth AU $ 9 million (US $ 7 million), which included cash, designer wallets, casino chips and jewelry.
The arrest of Tse Chi Lop almost a decade after launching that operation is a breakthrough for Australian authorities.
The country’s attorney general will now begin preparing a formal extradition request for the alleged drug trafficker to face trial.
Most of Asia’s methamphetamine comes from the “Golden Triangle” border areas between Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and southwest China, which are pumping unprecedented amounts of synthetic drugs to world markets.
READ: Southeast Asia is now dominant in the illegal drug trade, one comment
A UNODC study says that criminal groups in Southeast Asia are making more than $ 60 billion a year.
The production of methamphetamine, either in the tablet form “yaba” or in the highly potent crystallized ice version, as well as ketamine and fentanyl, takes place mainly in the eastern Shan State of Myanmar, but much of the chemical precursors needed to cook them flows across the border. from China.
Thailand in 2018 sourced more than 515 million yaba tablets, 17 times the amount of the entire Mekong region a decade ago, UNODC said.
Drug launches make headlines almost daily across the region, and traffickers are finding more creative ways to ship their illicit products.
