The alleged boss of Asia’s biggest crime syndicate and one of the world’s most wanted men has been extradited to Australia and arrested on drug-trafficking charges, police said yesterday.
Chinese-born Canadian Tse Chi Lop, 59, is suspected of being the leader of an Asian cartel known as Sam Gor, a major global producer and supplier of methamphetamines.
He was expected to appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court yesterday to answer a charge of “conspiracy to traffic commercial quantities of controlled drugs” after being extradited from the Netherlands.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tse, dubbed Asia’s “El Chapo” in reference to Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman’s nickname, faces life imprisonment if convicted. Australian police hailed it as “one of the most high-profile arrests in the history” of the country.
The Sam Gor organization — or “The Company” — is believed to launder billions of US dollars in drug money through casinos, hotels and real estate in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region. Tse was detained at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in January last year after a decade-long hunt.
He had been the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.
Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the arrest came after a “very complex investigation.”
“We allege this male is the head of a large transnational organized crime syndicate,” she said.
“By their very nature, these very senior figures within the syndicates obviously deliberately stay hands-off in terms of the business dealings,” she said. “That’s why it’s such a significant arrest and why it has taken a fair amount of time.”
Australian police said that the charges relate to a specific 2012-2013 operation transferring drugs from Melbourne to Sydney. A police sting at the time nabbed 27 people and netted 20kg of methamphetamine with a current street value of about US$3 million. A second man has also been arrested after being extradited from Thailand.
“The hard work of investigators, and the [Australian Federal Police] international network, has enabled these alleged offenders to be charged and face the justice system in Australia,” Barrett said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS