By Tom Allard, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-um
BANGKOK (Reuters) – A second senior leader of a vast drug trafficking syndicate has been arrested, said a Thai drug trafficking official, as a transnational network approaches the Sam Gor group, which the police say dominates the $ 70 annual drug trade. billion in Asia Pacific.
The October arrest of Hong Kong citizen Lee Chung Chak in Bangkok preceded the high-profile arrest in Holland of Tse Chi Lop, a Canadian citizen born in China who the police suspect is the union’s top leader, also called “The company” .
Lee, 65, has been a former Tse prison partner suspected of involvement in the drug trade for four decades. A 2018 Australian Federal Police (AFP) document reviewed by Reuters outlining the union’s top 19 targets described Lee as a “senior project manager responsible for major controlled drug ventures on the border.”
The two arrests on different continents in three months are the result of a decade-long investigation by AFP, which also leads the multinational task force Operation Kungur that targets the union.
It is rare that suspected drug traffickers are successfully arrested and prosecuted in the Asia-Pacific region.
“The suspect was arrested by the Thai narcotics police on October 1 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by a Thai court, which followed an extradition request by Australian authorities,” said Lt. Gen. Montri Yimyaem, chief of the Thailand’s Narcotics Suppression Department when asked about Lee.
“Extradition is currently being processed by the court.”
In recent years, Lee has emerged as a rival to the Canadian as a major player in the region’s drug trade, according to two investigators, who spoke to Reuters on condition that they were not identified.
“We understand that his star had become an equal or even bigger player,” said one of the investigators. “It is a very significant prison in its own right.”
Thai authorities seized a laptop and several phones when they searched Lee’s apartment in an upscale area of Bangkok, a potential intelligence treasure, the two investigators told Reuters. A third official added that a document and money in various denominations were also seized.
Lee is appealing the November approval of the extradition request from the Thai Criminal Court of Australia, said a source at the Thai Ministry of Justice. Tse is imprisoned in the Netherlands, where a court has not yet ruled on his extradition to Australia.
Lee could not be reached at the prison, nor was his lawyer identified by Reuters. A lawyer for Tse declined to comment. An AFP media official declined to comment.
Tse’s alleged role – whose nickname is Sam Gor, or “Brother Number Three” in Cantonese – as the union leader and the investigation into his activities was revealed by Reuters in 2019.
(A link to the Reuters Special Report: https://reut.rs/3oOjiIc)
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that the union earned $ 17 billion from meth trafficking in the Asia-Pacific region in 2018 alone. UNODC representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas , compared Tse with the notorious head of the Latin American cartel Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Police also suspect that the criminal group traffics heroin, ketamine, cocaine and MDMA, known as ecstasy, several officials in the region told Reuters.
DRUG VETERAN
Tse and Lee were the subject of requests from AFP for police authorities around the world to arrest them. They must have been accused of importing illicit drugs a decade ago, investigators say.
The two men supplied drugs to a Melbourne-based drug gang and were registered in interceptions aimed at the gang leader, Suky Lieu, investigators alleged.
The verdict of a judge who rejected Lieu’s attempt to reduce his prison sentence said Lieu owned a small Asian grocery store and was in regular contact with his drug suppliers in Hong Kong, using up to 60 phones and SIM cards and speaking in English. code. The verdict said Lieu was the leader of the drug ring. Tse and Lee were not mentioned in the verdict.
The two investigators told Reuters that Lee was arrested in Sydney in the 1980s, allegedly for managing heroin messengers. He never went to trial because a key witness died, they said. Reuters could not independently confirm this.
Lee was sentenced to 140 months in prison in 1998 for playing a “supervisory role” in a conspiracy to import heroin into the United States, federal court records show. Lee – extradited from Thailand to face the charge – spent time in Elkton, Ohio, while Tse was imprisoned there.
Tse was sentenced to nine years in prison for a separate conspiracy to import heroin into the United States. The two were released from Elkton a month apart, after serving their sentences, according to US Bureau of Prison records.
Police suspect Lee later played a key role for the union that supervised drug laboratory operators in Shan state, in northern Myanmar, and traveled there regularly, the two investigators said. Shan State, which is largely controlled by armed ethnic groups, has been the epicenter of drug manufacturing in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia for decades.
(Reporting by Tom Allard, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-um in Bangkok; additional reporting by Stephanie van den Berg in The Hague; Editing by William Mallard)