AMSTERDAM, KOMPAS.TV – Police Netherlands arrested the leader of the largest drug cartel in the Asia Pacific on Friday (22/1/2021). King of Drugs Tse Chi Lop it was caught in Amsterdam.
Tse Chi Lop is a Chinese born Canadian citizen. Reuters said Tse was Asia’s most wanted fugitive.
It operates a syndicate named “The Company” formed from five major Asian gangs. Police referred to the syndicate as Sam Gor, a Cantonese phrase referring to one of Tse’s nicknames, “Brother Number Three”.
The Sam Gor Syndicate smuggled tons of methamphetamine (shabu), heroin and ketamine to dozens of countries in Asia Pacific, from Japan to New Zealand. However, their main business is methamphetamine which is often sold in tea packs.
Sam Gor’s income from methamphetamine in 2018 was in the range of 8 billion to 17.7 billion US dollars per year. UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) said, Sam Gor controls 40 to 70 percent of the methamphetamine market in Asia.
This Sam Gor Syndicate made Tse Chi Lop the equivalent of the legendary drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán or Pablo Escobar. And this syndicate has a more sophisticated working system than the Latin American cartel.
Sam Gor has a bigger and more spread out market. This syndicate also collaborates with many local criminal groups, such as yakuza in Japan, motorcycle gangs in Australia, and ethnic Chinese gangs in various parts of Southeast Asia.
In fact, because of their huge income, many criminal groups are willing to stop bloody feuds so as not to lose profits from this syndicate.
This arrest of Tse in Amsterdam was the end of a pursuit of more than a decade. These arrests under the umbrella of Operation Kungur were led by the Australian Federal Police. The operation involved 20 police agencies in Asia, North America and Europe.
In recent years, Tse has been known to have moved between Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Previously, he was caught and imprisoned in the United States in 1990.
Tse was released in 2006 and is suspected of immediately plunging back into the drug business.
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