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The reason, Jeremy Douglas from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Bangkok told Reuters as far back as Oct. The UNODC's Douglas added: "The message is you can't just stop at the drug seizure.A recent string of drug busts in Southeast Asia - 55 million methamphetamine pills and 1.5 tonnes of crystal meth in Laos in October, and this year at least a billion pills, 6 tonnes of heroin and 4.4 tonnes of crystal meth - have led some international agencies to conclude that the production of illicit narcotics in the region is booming. To unwind the money trail, Thailand has been working with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), whose skills were honed in the fight with the Latin American cartels.īut crime experts warn police must be ready to follow the money wherever it leads if they are to get close to the heads of the criminal chain.
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The market-leading syndicate is believed to be the "Sam Gor" group, dominated by Chinese gangsters who control at least 40 percent of Asia's meth - sending their signature tea packets stuffed with "ice" across the Asia-Pacific region.Īsian organized crime is more stealthy than its violent and showy Latin American peers, operating in anonymity across countries with long, porous borders, corruptible police, and large domestic markets of drug users.
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The meth is produced in the "Golden Triangle" - cutting across northern Thailand, Laos, China and Myanmar - where armed rebels are the law and drug lords lease jungle labs under their protection. The UNODC estimates they are making between $30-$60 billion a year and are the biggest meth producers in the world. On Friday, Thai authorities were set to burn seized drugs worth $1.7 billion - another batch worth $800 million was incinerated in Myanmar - during an annual parade of law enforcement successes across the region.īut the record amounts are just a sliver of the money on the table for Asia's meth lords, who emerge from drug crackdowns by raising production and piercing borders with corruption. it's mid-sized but is still moving a massive volume of money." "It's impossible to guess the real amount these drug networks are making," Lieutenant-General Wissanu Prasarttong-Osoth, assistant to Thailand's police chief, told AFP.īut the Daoreung's dexterity in laundering shows the "scale and sophistication of the networks", according to Jeremy Douglas of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It is a cycle of drug production, trafficking and laundering that generates untold billions and turns a secondary economy of cryptocurrency, supercars and plush overseas properties. Police allege she still ran a drug empire which spanned the country using gold shops and construction companies to clean at least $100 million cash through 113 accounts to move the money. The main group was allegedly controlled by Daoreung Somseang, a Thai woman already in custody in a Bangkok prison on trafficking offences. Thailand's get-tough message follows the recent unspooling of several networks, who bought oil with drug profits and traded it on international markets as well as transforming dirty money into construction materials for sale such as steel pipes, roofing and machinery.
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"But we are confident there is at least 12 billion baht in drug-related assets - drug money is being turned into gold, zinc, steel rods and oil."