The police in Australia are cooperating with police services from China, Canada, Taiwan and the United States in the hunt for a drug trader who would earn billions of euros a year from the trade in (among other things) crystal meth: the Canadian Tse Chi Lop (55 ). Documents that the Reuters news agency has seen show that the police see him as one of the largest drug traffickers in the world.
Methamphetamine
The cartel he was to lead could be compared in terms of turnover and size to the Sinaloa cartel of JoaquÃn Guzman, who had since been sentenced to life imprisonment . That is why Tse Chi Lop is also referred to as the "El Chapo of Asia". According to Reuters, the investigation is led by the Australian police, but receives support from police services from countries such as Taiwan, China, Canada and the United States. Reuters had files from the American and Taiwanese authorities. It would be the largest international police operation in Asia to date.
Tse is said to be one of the leaders of an organization of five groups referred to as "The Company" or "Sam Gor". Other leaders are drug criminals from Hong Kong, Myanmar and China.
Methamphetamine is the core business of the network. China is important in that world because the chemical industry of that country produces raw materials for meth on a large scale. But the cartel also produces and trades heroin and ketamine. One smuggling method was a line in tea packs to countries such as Japan and New Zealand. In Japan, Sam Gor would collaborate with the Yakuza, and furthermore with Australian motorcycle gangs and ethnic Chinese gangs in Southeast Asia.
The United Nations Agency for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates the group's profit in 2018 at 8 billion dollars, but noted that that amount could also be 17 billion dollars. According to the UN, the cartel has a 40 to 70 percent share in the market for crystal meth. This market has - at least due to growth in Asia - become at least four times as large in the last five years.
Heroin smuggling
Tse Chi Lop was born in China but moved to Canada in 1988 and lived in New York in 1998 where he was convicted of heroin trafficking in a court case. He was barely nine years in prison, a low sentence, because his parents and son were in need of care. He was released in 2006 and returned to Canada according to police.
Since then it would have been a criminal offense for him and he would have amassed a huge personal fortune. Tse's reputation has the proportions of an opponent of James Bond from the films of the same name. He loves five-star hotels, luxury country houses, copious parties and has 24-hour surveillance of a bunch of Thai kick boxers. After a stay in the gambling city of Macau, he would have had to pay a bill of 60 million dollars.
