Tse Chi Lop is protected by Thai kickboxing fighters, traveling by private plane and once losing 66 million USD in one night because of gambling.

Tse Chi Lop, 55, a Canadian born in China, is suspected of leading a multinational drug trafficking organization formed by an alliance of five triads under the Triads in Asia. Members call it the "Company". The police called the network Sam Sam (Tam Ca), named after one of Tse's nicknames.

Sam Gor is accused of distributing tons of ice, heroin and ketamine drugs to at least a dozen countries from Japan in North Asia to New Zealand in the South Pacific, of which ice is the main business. , with the usual trick is to camouflage drugs into tea bags.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates Sam Gor's revenues in 2018 at $ 8 billion a year, but says it could reach $ 17.7 billion. The UN agency estimates that this group accounts for 40-70% of the region's wholesale market of stone drugs.

Tse is the main target of Operation Kungur, an investigation led by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), involving around 20 agencies from Asia, North America and Europe. This is the largest international effort to combat Asian drug trafficking networks. Burmese, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, American and Canadian officials participated in the investigation.

Police have not publicly identified Tse as Sam Gor's boss, but a document on 19 AFP hunting targets obtained by Reuters showed he was the leader of this group. "Tse Chi Lop is on par with El Chapo or maybe Pablo Escobar," Jeremy Douglas, representing Southeast Asia and the Pacific for UNODC, said, referring to the Mexican drug lord who was imprisoned and the infamous Colombian cocaine boss. died in 1993.

Sam Gor is very wealthy, disciplined and sophisticated, even more than Latin American gangs. Sam Gor has a larger drug market, is more widely dispersed, and works with more local crime groups, including Japanese yakuza, Australian motor gangs and Chinese-origin gangs across Southeast Asia. . Gangs in Asia are also less likely to fight because groups often unite to coexist peacefully and share huge profits.

There's also a big difference between Tse Chi Lop and Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman or Pablo Escobar. Mexican and Colombian drug lords are featured in the media for their lavish lifestyle and violence. Meanwhile, Tse lives very discreetly and remains free.

Tse Chi Lop was born in Guangdong Province, southern China. He joined a criminal group similar to the Triple Emperor in Guangzhou called the Great Quran. Tse then went to Hong Kong and to Canada in 1988.

In the 1990s, Tse moved back and forth between North America, Hong Kong, Macau and Southeast Asia. He rose to become a middle-class member of a heroin smuggling line from the Golden Triangle, an opium production area at the border point of Myanmar, Thailand, China and Laos.

In 1998, Tse was arrested and charged with drug trafficking in New York. He was convicted of conspiracy to smuggle heroin into the United States and faces a life sentence. Tse pleaded for leniency with a petition filed by the lawyer in 2000.

In the petition, Tse explained that his parents were ill, his 12-year-old son had lung disease, and his wife could not afford the family. If acquitted, Tse promised to open a restaurant. He also expressed regret for his crimes. The pleadings worked: Tse was only sentenced to 9 years in prison.

After being released in 2006, Tse quickly returned to the drug world, taking advantage of relations in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and the Golden Triangle. He applied a business model that customers could not resist: If the shipment of drugs he had delivered to the customer was blocked by the police, he would compensate that amount of the goods without paying additional customers. or get your deposit back.

Tse places great emphasis on personal security. He is always surrounded by 8 Thai Kickboxing fighters. Each year, Tse organizes sumptuous birthday parties at resorts and 5-star hotels, traveling by private jet. He once stayed at a Thai resort for a month.

Tse is a patron of Asian casinos and loves horse racing betting. "We believe he once lost about $ 66 million a night in Macau," an AFP anonymous investigator in Asia said.

Sam Gor's activities were gradually uncovered when a young man named Cai Jeng Ze walked into Yangon Airport in Myanmar on November 15, 2016 to prepare for a flight back to Taiwan.

Cai then walked around the airport with a leather bag and two cell phones. He looked nervous, restless, his hands were blistering, and this made the police suspicious. A former Burmese police commander said that Cai's hand was such that he had manufactured drugs. "Drugs are very poisonous," he said.

Cai was searched and the police discovered that he had tied 80g of ketamine into each leg, but claimed that it was a pesticide or vitamin for plants and flowers. Cai kept silent after his arrest, possibly because he was afraid that if he revealed anything about the organization, he would suffer the same fate as the man who appeared in two videos saved on Cai's phone: he cried and tied, at least three guys took turns burning his legs with a torch.

The tortured person threw out the drug from a boat because he mistook a ship approaching him as a police patrol boat. The torturers wanted to check if he was telling the truth or not. By shooting and sharing videos, gang members send messages about the price of disloyalty.

Cai's two phones are a huge collection of photos and videos, social media chats and thousands of call logs and text messages. They are referred to as "intelligence treasures" to authorities, a Myanmar police commander said.

For at least two months before his arrest, Cai traveled to various places in Myanmar to make a major drug deal for the organization. Police discovered a snapshot of an invoice from an international courier company documenting the delivery of two shipments to an address in Yangon.

Two days after Cai was arrested, Myanmar police raided an address in Yangon and collected 62 kg of ketamine. That night, they also collected 1.1 tons of rock drugs at the Yangon jetty. 9 people were arrested but they were only low-level members of the organization. Cai remained silent.

When looking at Cai's photo and video collection of phones, an AFP investigator in Yangon recognized a familiar face he had seen at an intelligence meeting a year ago. "I was impressed with this guy because he is Canadian," the investigator said. That person is Tse Chi Lop.

Myanmar police invited AFP to send a group of intelligence analysts to Yangon in early 2017 to research data on Cai's phone. They found on the phone photos of a large batch of drug parcels blocked in China, Japan and New Zealand in 2016. A group of Chinese officials also said the picture and phone number. and the address on Cai's phone proves he is involved in some drug trafficking chain in China. Cai is imprisoned in Yangon.

Thanks to two cell phones from Cai, police discovered the trick of drug traffickers was to use a fishing boat to move to the sea to get goods from "mother ships", including the Taiwanese fishing boat Shun de Man 66 .

The Cai investigation in Myanmar led to another big reveal: The ice drug production center has moved from southern China provinces to Shan state on the northeastern border of Myanmar. The site allows Sam Gor to run freely, which is less likely to be obstructed by law enforcement. Armed militant groups in semi-autonomous regions like Shan State control vast swaths of land and use their drug revenues to buy weapons to deal with government troops.

A large amount of Sam Gor's drug ice comes from the drug manufacturing facility near Loikan village in Shan State. One local described that people working at the facility always smelled bad.

"I used to ask them 'why don't you take a bath?'. They said they took a bath but they couldn't get rid of this smell." The chemicals used to prepare stone drugs have penetrated their skin. "We all know what these people do there," locals said. "But we didn't discuss this. Doing so would only be dangerous."

Investigators have obtained a number of victories. Last February, police raided the Loikan Laboratory in Myanmar and found enough tea packaging to disguise 10 tons of ice. Shun De Man 66 was stopped by the Indonesian navy that same month with more than a ton of ice drugs. In March 2018, a member of the role of Sam Gor was arrested in Cambodia and extradited to Myanmar. In December 2018, Sue Songkittikul's estate, suspected of being a senior member of the organization, was raided in Thailand.

However, the amount of drugs leaving the Golden Triangle to many parts of Asia - Pacific is increasing. The seizure of ice and yaba (a combination of ice and caffeine) increased by about 50% last year to 126 tons in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Drug prices fall in most countries. UNODC concluded in a report in March that these are signs that the supply of drugs has expanded.

Sam Gor is a "tough" opponent. When officials stopped a drug-carrying vessel at sea, Sam Gor moved to hide the goods in containers. When Thailand blocked the transfer of drugs with the ministry from Myanmar, the organization diverted to countries like Laos.

Over the years, the police have had little success in eradicating Asian drug lords. The last time a notorious Asian drug lord was indicted and sentenced to severe imprisonment was in the mid-1970s. Ng Sik-ho, a drug smuggler in Hong Kong (China), was sentenced to 30 years in prison. for trafficking over 20 tons of opium and morphine.

Meanwhile, Tse is still free. He knew he was being hunted by the police but he continued to sell drugs.

UNODC estimates the Asia-Pacific drug retail market is worth $ 30.3 to $ 61.4 billion annually. The wholesale price of one kilogram of ice made in northeastern Myanmar is only about $ 1,800, but the average retail price is $ 70,500 / kg in Thailand, $ 298,000 / kg in Australia and $ 588,000 / kg in Japan.

"If gangs can only trade one ton of ice and lose 10 tons, they will still make a big profit," an anti-drug official said. "They may fail, but that's okay."