Asia’s most wanted drug lord captured in Netherlands

Dutch law enforcers arrested the leader of Asia’s biggest crime syndicate Tse Chi Lop, 57, in the Netherlands.

Dutch police spokesman Thomas Aling confirmed the news in a statement on Sunday, June 24.

Chi Lop has been in hiding for over a decade since the launch of the Asian mega-cartel known as “Sam Gor”, a major producer and supplier of methamphetamines globally.

He was arrested on Friday morning after landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport few years after his name appeared on list of UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

According to Reuters, the Chinese-born Canadian citizen became a member of the Big Circle Gang, a Triad-like organisation founded by disillusioned Red Guards at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Before the recent arrested, Chi Lop was arraigned by United States authorities for heroin trafficking in 1998 and was later released from an Ohio prison in 2006.

He later moved back to Asia where he led the transformation of the region’s $70 billion annual drug trade. Other reports indicates that Tse was allegedly involved in at least 13 drug importations to Australia

In 2019, a major multinational investigation was launched into him and his syndicate before the issue of warrants of arrest by China and Australia.

Although charges have not been revealed following his arrest but Australian police disclosed that they will seek Tse’s extradition to Australia to face court.

A report by UNODC revealed that Southeast Asia’s crime groups cumulative net more than US$60 billion a year from production of methamphetamine as either in tablet form “yaba” or the highly potent crystallised “ice” version.

In recent years, drug traffickers have invented the more creative ways to ship out their illicit products across the world.