Dutch police have arrested the alleged leader of a large Asian drug syndicate who is listed as one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives and has been compared with Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Tse Chi Lop, a Chinese-born Canadian national, was on Friday detained at the request of Australian police, who led an investigation that found his organization dominates the US$70 billion-a-year Asia-Pacific drug trade, Dutch police spokesman Thomas Aling said on Saturday.
Tse is expected to be extradited after appearing before a judge, Aling said, adding that his arrest by national police took place without incident at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
“He was already on the most-wanted list and he was detained based on intelligence we received,” Aling said.
Dutch police were unable to provide details about the legal proceedings and it was not clear if Tse had a lawyer.
Allegedly, Tse’s crime syndicate dominates the Asia-Pacific crystal methamphetamine trade, which increased fourfold in the five years to 2019, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Regional law enforcers say that the syndicate imported highly potent meth into more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Japan and New Zealand, and trafficked heroin and MDMA.
Tse, 57, an ex-convict who formerly lived in Toronto, has moved between Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the past few years, according to counter-narcotics officers from four countries and documents reviewed by Reuters.
The group has “been connected with or directly involved in at least 13 cases” of drug trafficking since January 2015, the documents showed.
UNODC representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Jeremy Douglas said in 2019 that “Tse Chi Lop is in the league of El Chapo or maybe Pablo Escobar,” referring to Latin America’s most notorious drug lords.
The UNODC estimated that Tse’s drug syndicate earned as much as US$17 billion in 2018.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) yesterday said that it had issued an arrest warrant for Tse in 2019, “in connection with AFP-led Operation Volante, which dismantled a global crime syndicate operating in five countries.”
Douglas hailed the arrest as a “great result,” but cautioned that it might not have a big impact on drug trafficking in the region.
“They got their man. Kudos to the Australian Federal Police, but the organization remains, the demand for synthetic drugs has been built, and someone will step in to replace Tse,” Douglas said.
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