4-7-15 An investigation by the South China Morning Post based on official documents from the Mexican attorney general's office and interviews with both national and international law enforcement figures found that Mexico's notorious Sinaloa cartel was using bank accounts in the city to launder tens of millions of dollars in drug funds.
A Kwai Chung-based pharmaceutical company was also allegedly found to have supplied a Mexican crime syndicate with key precursor chemicals used in the production of crystal meth, the illegal recreational drug also known as Ice. Many of the chemicals needed to manufacture the synthetic stimulant come from the mainland, particularly Guangdong.
Considered by many to be the most powerful and sophisticated drug-trafficking organisation in the world, the Sinaloa cartel has been expanding into Hong Kong and the region over the past five years, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
Last year the SCM Post revealed that the syndicate had linked up with Hong Kong's 14K and Sun Yee On triads, which were fuelling the US-Mexico meth trade by supplying precursor chemicals including ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. https://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-drug-cartels-expand-into-hong-kong-to-launder-money-2015-4
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4-9-18 Then in January rescue personnel responding to a house fire discovered 16 kilos of carfentanil--a powerful synthetic opioid believed to be 10,000-times more powerful than morphine--mixed with a cutting agent in the basement of another house in Edmonton….
Between 2011 and 2015, six clandestine labs were identified in Canada where illicit fentanyl production occurred or was intended to occur, according to Health Canada. …more than 60 percent of the methamphetamine seized in Japan and more than 80 percent in Australia is synthesized in Canada….
In 2015 authorities in Alberta seized 100 kilograms of the fentanyl precursor N-phenethylpiperidinone (NPP) at the Edmonton International Airport. They said the precursor was capable of producing 38 million fentanyl pills.
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11-24-18 Chinese criminals, Latin American cartels and Nigerian brokers have been forging ties and widening their international networks. While increasing amounts of cocaine from Latin America are arriving in Asia via shipping containers or through drug mules, criminal organisations are buying chemicals from China to feed the demand in the United States and Canada for drugs such as fentanyl – an opioid for treating pain that is also widely used recreationally….
cocaine is in the region, mostly for the rich upper class, because it’s much more expensive. It can be found in the party scene in Bangkok, Hong Kong, other major cities in south and eastern China like in Shanghai and Beijing.” Cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, Douglas notes, have major container ports. “The chances are better than putting it through the airport with passenger screening, which is higher risk.”…
Other than China, which has the largest industrial base in Asia, evidence of fentanyl production or transit has also been found in India, Pakistan and Thailand, according to the UN….
Three Colombian nationals--Henry Poveda, Christian Duque-Aristizabal and John Jairo Hincapie-Ramirez--were accused in the US in 2015 of running a worldwide money-laundering operation based in Guangzhou, a southern Chinese city just a few hours from Hong Kong.
Court documents said the Guangzhou enterprise had laundered at least US$5 billion through bank accounts in Hong Kong and mainland China on behalf of drug-trafficking organisations in Mexico and Colombia. According to US prosecutors, currency exchange houses, casinos, export companies and factories received billions of dollars. The scheme involved purchasing counterfeit goods in China, which were then shipped to Colombia and elsewhere for resale.
Chinese nationals have also been found abroad facilitating operations for Latin American cartels. In October last year, Colombian authorities dismantled a complex money-laundering racket, involving Chinese citizens and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, according to the Spanish-language newspaper El Tiempo.
Undeclared goods worth US$88 million were seized in what was described as a major blow to an illicit business involving at least 20 companies, 17 of which were run by Chinese nationals. The operation also found that syndicates were placing Chinese citizens, sometimes without visas, in Colombia to give the appearance they were running legitimate businesses.
In May this year six Chinese nationals were also arrested in Mexico City on suspicion of being part of a money-laundering ring linked to several criminal organisations….
2017, Shanghai authorities seized 1.1 tonnes of cocaine concealed in the cargo of frozen mackerel at Yangshan Port, south of Shanghai, on its way to Cambodia from South America. 2018, Chinese police seized 1.3 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of US$160 million in the country’s biggest ever haul of the drug. The cocaine, from an unidentified South American country, was shipped to the port of Shanwei in Guangdong.
This comes as Chinese businesses grow their footprint in Latin America and Caribbean countries, with Beijing increasingly devoting attention to that part of the world. For example, in January, the Chinese government announced the region would be included in the “Belt and Road Initiative”, which involves billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across several continents.
In Italy, for instance, authorities recently raised concerns over Nigerian syndicates running sex and drug rackets in areas where the local mafias didn’t have full control. They are allowed to operate as long as they pay protection money to the local syndicates or give them a share of their drug and prostitution profits.
Wotherspoon said he was aware of two main foreign gangs in Hong Kong. “One is a Nigerian cartel based in São Paulo and another is a Colombian cartel based in Pereira,” he said. Pereira, a mountainous city in western Colombia that is home to several gangs, has been listed as one of the top 50 most violent cities in the world. “They say that Hong Kong belongs to Pereira as far as the Colombian drug lords are concerned – it’s an open secret,” Wotherspoon claimed….
Cocaine busts in Brazil’s harbours--where the largest consignments go through – are also at a record high this year. After just seven months seizures in 2018 were already at the highest level in the past decade, at an average of 66kg of cocaine a day.
Such figures can be explained by authorities stepping up their actions, but also by the fact that criminal networks are increasingly more active, in particular First Capital Command--a Brazilian gang with strong connections in other South American countries….
“The use of women as drug mules has increased in the past three years. In 2016 they represented 32 per cent … and it reached 46 per cent by August this year,” said the federal police spokesman at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport.
“In the past couple of years, the drug mules [in Hong Kong] have been mostly women,” said Wotherspoon, the advocate. “The Nigerians target women because they are easier to trick. They are usually desperate for money. Many are single mothers from countries like Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Suriname … Nigerians have agentsrecruiting people in all these countries.” https://multimedia.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2174634/narcos-hidden-drug-trafficking/
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Parfraimy Antonio is one of the six suspected drug dealers arrested for drugdistribution. -William Miller
Six suspected drug dealers who are accused of running a $7 million fentanyl distribution operation out of a Bronx apartment were released without bail under the state’s new criminal justice law early Wednesday. https://nypost.com/2020/01/29/suspects-accused-of-running-7m-fentanyl-ring-released-without-bail/
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