Prosecutors have launched an investigation into Chang An-lo (張安樂), better known as the “White Wolf” (白狼), alleging he heads a Chinese gang working with Mexican drug cartels to produce and distribute fentanyl in the US.
It came after an interview by US author Peter Schweizer, talking about his book on the opioid epidemic in the US, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, published in February last year.
Supreme Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Wu Yi-ming (吳怡明) in a statement on Wednesday said that the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office would conduct an investigation, “following reports in US and Taiwanese media alleging Chang An-lo, the ‘White Wolf,’ is leading his Bamboo Union gang to assist Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel in the fentanyl drug trade.”
Photo: Wang Ting-chuan, Taipei Times
Schweizer alleged that Chang and the Bamboo Union gang are producing and trafficking fentanyl in the US.
Chang is a well-known public figure who, together with Chen Chi-li (陳啟禮), or the “King Duck” (鴨霸子), founded the Bamboo Union gang, a criminal syndicate mainly consisting of people who fled with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime to Taiwan in late 1940s following the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in the Chinese Civil War.
Born in Nanjing, Chang has been active in politics after founding the China Unification Promotion Party, known for its pro-China stance and clashes with pro-Taiwan independence groups.
Chang left Taiwan to study in the US in 1975 and was allegedly connected to the 1984 murder of Taiwanese writer Henry Liu (劉宜良) in California when Chang operated a restaurant in Los Angeles, which served as a base for organizing the Bamboo Union gang activities in US, such as debt-collecting and intimidation.
Chang in 1985 was convicted of trafficking heroine and cocaine and handed a 15-year prison sentence. He was paroled after serving 10 years.
Chang returned to Taiwan in 1995, but fled to China the next year and stayed there until 2013.
Schweizer said that the opioid epidemic had resulted in many deaths in the US, pointing to the roles of Chinese Communist Party propaganda and covert operations to influence the social justice movement and medical establishment to sow chaos in the US.
He wrote that during former US president Joe Biden’s term, Biden and his family members had received millions of dollars from Chinese oil tycoon Ye Jianming (葉簡明), who set up a petroleum company with a business partner, who Schweizer said was a drug lord known as the “White Wolf” who heads the Bamboo Union gang.
The gang also “has a partnership with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and helps them in the production and distribution of fentanyl in the US,” Schweizer said, adding that the gang was pivotal in turning the Sinaloa cartel into the “Kings of Fentanyl.”
He also wrote that the White Wolf has close ties with the Chinese government and that senior Chinese Communist Party officials call him “Big Brother.”
He said that the gang has been involved in the international drug trade for decades, and is one of leading Chinese gangs active in US cities with large Chinese diaspora populations, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, Chicago, Houston, Miami and Phoenix.
The gang has built up a sophisticated US network capable of supplying members with guns, narcotics and fraudulent identity papers to operate internationally.
It has been cooperating with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to traffick fentanyl into the US, resulting in the deaths of many Americans, Schweizer said.
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