Alleged Asia drug kingpin arrested after Australian investigation

Tse Chi Lop is said to be the ringleader of East Asia’s multibillion-dollar Sam Gor crime syndicate

Police patrol Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. Reuters

The alleged ringleader of Asia’s biggest crime syndicate and one of the world’s most wanted men has been arrested in the Netherlands.

Police had been chasing Tse Chi Lop, 57, for years until his arrest by Dutch police on Friday, acting on a request from Australia’s federal police.

Australian authorities on Sunday said a man “of significant interest” to law-enforcement agencies had been detained. A police spokeswoman confirmed his name as Tse Chi Lop.

The Chinese-born Canadian citizen has been identified by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as the suspected leader of the Asian cartel known as Sam Gor, a major producer and supplier of methamphetamine globally.

Sam Gor is believed to launder its billions in drug money through businesses in South-East Asia’s Mekong region, including casinos, hotels and property companies.

Australia’s federal police said the arrest on Friday was the result of an operation that in 2012-2013 caught 27 people linked to a crime syndicate operating in five countries.

The group’s members were accused of importing “substantial quantities of heroin and methamphetamine” into Australia, long a lucrative market for drug traffickers.

“The syndicate targeted Australia over a number of years, importing and distributing large amounts of illicit narcotics, laundering the profits overseas and living off the wealth obtained from crime,” Australian police said.

As part of the raids across Melbourne, police seized A$9 million ($6.9m) worth of assets including cash, designer handbags, casino chips and jewellery.

The arrest almost a decade after that operation’s launch is a major breakthrough for the Australian authorities.

The country’s attorney-general will now begin preparing a formal extradition request for Tse to face trial.

Most of Asia’s methamphetamine comes from the “Golden Triangle” border areas where Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and south-west China converge.

The region is the world’s biggest source of synthetic drugs.

A study by the UN drugs agency says South-East Asia’s crime groups are earning more than $60 billion a year.

Production of methamphetamine – in tablet “yaba” form or the highly potent crystallised “ice” version – as well as ketamine and fentanyl, takes place mainly in the eastern Myanmar state of Shan.

But large quantities of the chemicals needed to make them flow across the border from China.

Thailand in 2018 intercepted more than 515 million tablets, 17 times the amount seized in the entire Mekong region a decade ago, the UN agency said.

Drug hauls occur almost daily across the region, with traffickers finding more creative ways to distribute their products.

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