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One of world’s most wanted alleged drug barons – a billionaire dubbed Asia’s El Chapo – is set to finally face justice in Australia after federal police carried out a covert plot to arrest him after he was deported from Taiwan.
Tse Chi Lop, 56, was arrested after departing on a flight to Canada on Friday in a stunning coup for the Australian Federal Police, which has tracked his suspected involvement in multiple billion-dollar drug importations into Australia since at least 2008. They will push for him to be extradited to Australia to face trial. He was arrested during a stop over in the Netherlands in response to a request from the AFP.
Tse is the most important alleged drug importer to be nabbed by the federal police in two decades, with police intelligence sources estimating his syndicate is allegedly responsible for up to 70 per cent of all narcotics entering Australia.
Alleged drug kingpin Tse Chi Lop.
The organisation at the centre of the case, known variously as The Company or the Grandfather Syndicate, exploited Crown casino's weak corporate controls to launder funds, according to police intelligence sources, court files and gaming data leaked from Crown Resorts.
Suspected members of the organisation also have high level links to governments across the region, having invested in large infrastructure ventures under the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road Scheme, a massive economic project that aims to build trade and transport links from East Asia to Europe.
Tse’s close associate, Triad boss "Broken Tooth" Wan Kuok Koi, was blacklisted by the US government in December, which alleged Wan had attached his extensive criminal operations to Beijing's Belt and Road initiative.
Macau crime boss Wan Kuok Koi, known as Broken Tooth, walks out of Coloane Prison in Macau in 2012.CREDIT:AP
A 2012 briefing from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission described The Company’s members' “well-established network of contacts across many governments as well as legitimate business and company structures, that enables them to mask and support their criminal activities".
Last year, AFP deputy commissioner Karl Kent described the organisation as “being a huge threat to Australia … not only in terms of illicit drugs but in terms of people smuggling, in terms of firearms.” In a 60 Minutes interview, he estimated The Company’s revenue to “exceed the gross domestic product of some of the states in which they operate.”
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission lists Tse as a Priority Organisation Target, a designation the criminal intelligence commission chief Mick Phelan has previously said is reserved for those entities suspected of causing significant harm to the nation.
Tse’s arrest will be heralded not just in Australia but by the US government and authorities in New Zealand, Canada, Japan,
Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and across Europe, places which have all served as markets or supply hubs for Tse’s organisation.
Policing authorities say that, more than any other alleged Asia Pacific drug trafficker, Tse represents the modernisation and corporatisation of organised crime. The syndicate he allegedly helps control is an amalgam of once competing Chinese Triad groups that have variously worked with Australian bikies, South American cartels and European crime bosses.
The Company mostly avoided generating media headlines and viewed violence as bad for business as it industrialised drug production via super laboratories in Myanmar’s lawless Shan State and accessed massive stockpiles of precursor chemicals in southern China.
The syndicate is alleged to have dispatched expendable “shore parties” to its most profitable market in Australia to handle wholesale distribution to local drug bosses. When these shore party drug runners or domestic distributors were occasionally busted by the AFP or state agencies, Tse allegedly shrugged it off as a business expense. He also had inside help.
A police intelligence report circulated among overseas agencies warned The Company had corrupted policing and security agencies across Asia. A former investigator told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Tse had boasted “Macau in my pocket.”
In 2019, Tse even obtained the contents of a highly confidential Australian Federal Police document circulated among partner forces which alerted him to the fact that he was a high value police target.
That fact makes the story of his investigation and planned extradition— pieced together by The Age and Herald over two years and conversations with more than a dozen Australian and Hong Kong serving and former investigators — even more remarkable.
Tracking a drug boss
In 2011, the Australian Federal Police began monitoring a millionaire Melbourne greengrocer with an unusual profile. Vietnamese born Australian national Suky Lieu was under surveillance as he met well established Italian mafia clan bosses in Melbourne. He also dined with Asian organised crime figures and he knew bikies.
Intelligence suggested he was a man in demand because of his access to a seemingly endless supply of imported narcotics being distributed in Sydney and Melbourne. A quietly spoken and determined federal police drugs investigator, Roland Singor, along with a small team of AFP investigators and analysts began closely tracking Lieu as part of probe codenamed Volante.
Media and press releases surrounding Lieu’s eventual arrest in 2013 depicted him as a Mr Big on par with Tony Mokbel. But phone taps later aired in Lieu’s court case revealed he was more akin to a logistics manager who was following orders from afar.
www.theage.com.au
Tse Chi Lop, 56, was arrested after departing on a flight to Canada on Friday in a stunning coup for the Australian Federal Police, which has tracked his suspected involvement in multiple billion-dollar drug importations into Australia since at least 2008. They will push for him to be extradited to Australia to face trial. He was arrested during a stop over in the Netherlands in response to a request from the AFP.
Tse is the most important alleged drug importer to be nabbed by the federal police in two decades, with police intelligence sources estimating his syndicate is allegedly responsible for up to 70 per cent of all narcotics entering Australia.
Alleged drug kingpin Tse Chi Lop.
The organisation at the centre of the case, known variously as The Company or the Grandfather Syndicate, exploited Crown casino's weak corporate controls to launder funds, according to police intelligence sources, court files and gaming data leaked from Crown Resorts.
Suspected members of the organisation also have high level links to governments across the region, having invested in large infrastructure ventures under the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road Scheme, a massive economic project that aims to build trade and transport links from East Asia to Europe.
Tse’s close associate, Triad boss "Broken Tooth" Wan Kuok Koi, was blacklisted by the US government in December, which alleged Wan had attached his extensive criminal operations to Beijing's Belt and Road initiative.
Macau crime boss Wan Kuok Koi, known as Broken Tooth, walks out of Coloane Prison in Macau in 2012.CREDIT:AP
A 2012 briefing from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission described The Company’s members' “well-established network of contacts across many governments as well as legitimate business and company structures, that enables them to mask and support their criminal activities".
Last year, AFP deputy commissioner Karl Kent described the organisation as “being a huge threat to Australia … not only in terms of illicit drugs but in terms of people smuggling, in terms of firearms.” In a 60 Minutes interview, he estimated The Company’s revenue to “exceed the gross domestic product of some of the states in which they operate.”
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission lists Tse as a Priority Organisation Target, a designation the criminal intelligence commission chief Mick Phelan has previously said is reserved for those entities suspected of causing significant harm to the nation.
Tse’s arrest will be heralded not just in Australia but by the US government and authorities in New Zealand, Canada, Japan,
Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and across Europe, places which have all served as markets or supply hubs for Tse’s organisation.
Policing authorities say that, more than any other alleged Asia Pacific drug trafficker, Tse represents the modernisation and corporatisation of organised crime. The syndicate he allegedly helps control is an amalgam of once competing Chinese Triad groups that have variously worked with Australian bikies, South American cartels and European crime bosses.
The Company mostly avoided generating media headlines and viewed violence as bad for business as it industrialised drug production via super laboratories in Myanmar’s lawless Shan State and accessed massive stockpiles of precursor chemicals in southern China.
The syndicate is alleged to have dispatched expendable “shore parties” to its most profitable market in Australia to handle wholesale distribution to local drug bosses. When these shore party drug runners or domestic distributors were occasionally busted by the AFP or state agencies, Tse allegedly shrugged it off as a business expense. He also had inside help.
A police intelligence report circulated among overseas agencies warned The Company had corrupted policing and security agencies across Asia. A former investigator told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Tse had boasted “Macau in my pocket.”
In 2019, Tse even obtained the contents of a highly confidential Australian Federal Police document circulated among partner forces which alerted him to the fact that he was a high value police target.
That fact makes the story of his investigation and planned extradition— pieced together by The Age and Herald over two years and conversations with more than a dozen Australian and Hong Kong serving and former investigators — even more remarkable.
Tracking a drug boss
In 2011, the Australian Federal Police began monitoring a millionaire Melbourne greengrocer with an unusual profile. Vietnamese born Australian national Suky Lieu was under surveillance as he met well established Italian mafia clan bosses in Melbourne. He also dined with Asian organised crime figures and he knew bikies.
Intelligence suggested he was a man in demand because of his access to a seemingly endless supply of imported narcotics being distributed in Sydney and Melbourne. A quietly spoken and determined federal police drugs investigator, Roland Singor, along with a small team of AFP investigators and analysts began closely tracking Lieu as part of probe codenamed Volante.
Media and press releases surrounding Lieu’s eventual arrest in 2013 depicted him as a Mr Big on par with Tony Mokbel. But phone taps later aired in Lieu’s court case revealed he was more akin to a logistics manager who was following orders from afar.
Drug deals, dirty money and links to Beijing: Australian police bring down Asia’s ‘Mr Big’
Tse Chi Lop is the most important alleged drug importer to be nabbed by the federal police in two decades. His syndicate is allegedly responsible for up to 70 per cent of all narcotics entering Australia.
