Thailand targets narco millions hidden in gold, steel and crypto

BANGKOK, Thailand - The downfall of a meth syndicate laundering tens of millions of dollars of drug money through Thai gold shops, oil and construction firms has cast rare light on the staggering scale of Asia's narco profits -- and the ruses used to hide them.

Thailand is Southeast Asia's meth "superhighway", with drugs from remote Myanmar labs pouring through the border destined for the local market or overseas as far as Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Prices have dropped as the drug labs ramp up production of yaba -- the tiny caffeinated pink or green pills guzzled by Southeast Asian truck drivers to clubbers -- and the more expensive and highly addictive crystal meth known as "ice".

Millions are hooked on drugs in Thailand, where prisons are stuffed with petty dealers and addicts.

But the drug lords remain beyond reach, hidden behind a web of middlemen and complex money laundering schemes.

Authorities say they are finally ready to change the game by going after drug money sloshing through Thai banks, construction businesses and cryptocurrency accounts.

"We have found an irregular flow in the banks of 170 billion baht ($5.4 billion) -- it may not all be drugs," Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin told reporters this week.

"But we are confident there is at least 12 billion baht ($388 million) in drug-related assets -- drug money is being turned into gold, zinc (panels), steel rods and oil." 

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.

The main group was allegedly controlled by Daoreung Somseang, a Thai woman already in custody in a Bangkok prison on trafficking offences.

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.

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.

"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.

FILTHY RICH BUT LOW-KEY

But 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.

"This one is not even a super-syndicate... it's mid-sized but is still moving a massive volume of money." 

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.

But 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.

The UNODC estimates they are making between $30-$60 billion a year and are the biggest meth producers in the world.

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 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.

Asian 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. 

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.

But 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.

The UNODC's Douglas added: "The message is you can't just stop at the drug seizure."

Agence France-Presse

Meth 'disaster' for region as seizures surge in Thailand

BANGKOK - Seizures of high-purity crystal methamphetamine have surged more than tenfold in Thailand over the past 2 years, statistics show, a stark indicator of the growth in industrial-scale production of the stimulant in neighboring Myanmar.

Thailand is a major trafficking route for crystal meth manufactured in Myanmar's Shan and Kachin states, where police say Asian organised crime groups have allied with local pro-government militias and armed rebels to set-up "super labs".

The drug syndicates have distributed the meth across the Asia-Pacific region, from South Korea to New Zealand and most countries in between, authorities say.

Some 18.4 tonnes of crystal meth, also known as ice, was seized in Thailand in 2018, according to preliminary statistics from the country's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) reviewed by Reuters. The final data is expected to be released publicly next month.

That is up from 5.2 tonnes in 2017 and 1.6 tonnes in 2016. It's more than treble the amount captured across all of Southeast Asia five years ago.

Myanmar's illicit labs also pump out tablets of meth mixed with caffeine, commonly know as "yaba", or crazy pill, in the Thai language. The tablets are popular with low-paid workers in grueling jobs and poor recreational drug users across Southeast Asia.

Thai authorities seized 516 million meth tablets in 2018, more than double the previous year and 4-and-a-half times the 114 million pills captured in 2016.

Niyom Termsrisuk, secretary general of the ONCB, told Reuters that, despite the rising seizures, prices for meth are falling, suggesting far more is eluding authorities than being stopped.

The average price of a meth tablet was 200 baht ($6.33) in 2013. The latest data, for 2017, showed a yaba pill can be bought for as little as 80 baht ($2.50), he said.

By flooding Thailand and other countries with meth, organised crime groups have "generated new users" by enticing them with lower prices, Niyom said. The users then become dependent on the highly addictive drug, creating a bigger market for the product.

"2018 A DISASTER"

Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle - which encompasses northern Myanmar and parts of Laos and Thailand - has long been a hub of illicit drug trafficking.

While opium cultivation and heroin refining has fallen in the past decade, methamphetamine production has more than filled the breach.

"It's hard to say anything other than 2018 was a disaster for the meth supply coming out of Myanmar," said Jeremy Douglas, the Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed while "health authorities are seriously under-resourced and have limited capacity to offer treatment", he added.

Regional police and analysts told Reuters that organised crime groups exploit the semi-lawless northern Myanmar borderlands, doing deals with the multitude of ethnic armed gangs and state-sponsored militias who control territory there.

The ONCB's Niyom said 8 tonnes of crystal meth had been captured en route to southern Thailand and the border with Malaysia in 2018. From there, "it was on its way to other markets", he said.

In the past year, police have intercepted boats laden with meth that left the Malaysian city of Penang. Syndicates also use "motherships" that pick up the drugs in the Andaman Sea and distribute them as far afield as Australia and New Zealand.

Meth from Myanmar has also been found smuggled in shipping containers in the Philippines and Malaysia.

According to regional anti-drugs police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, chemists are brought in from Taiwan and China to run the meth labs in Myanmar, while the precursors and lab equipment mostly come from China.

Last month, Myanmar's military intercepted state-of-the-art laboratory equipment near Muse, a city in Shan state on the Chinese border.

Regional police say the crystal meth produced in Myanmar is the purest they have seen.

According to an ONCB briefing document reviewed by Reuters, 99.92 percent of the crystal meth seized in Thailand in the first 6 months of 2018 was 90 percent pure or higher.

source: news.abs-cbn.com