Opium (44 page)

As opium production in South-east Asia increased in the 1960s, international criminals had become more interested in the region. Corsican gangsters in Vientiane acted as brokers between opium producers or heroin manufacturers and Corsican syndicates in France and heroin distributors in America. As Turkey started to cut back on poppy growing, so South-east Asian–Marseilles dealing became more important.

Not only GIs arrived in Vietnam in 1965. So did the American Mafia. Initially, they busied themselves with taking kickbacks from military contracts and running a few escort services in Saigon but they soon entered narcotics smuggling, establishing contacts in Hong Kong and with the Chinese syndicates.

The main distributors of heroin in South-east Asia were – and still are – Chinese criminal syndicates, known colloquially as the Triads. These are criminal fraternities which can trace their semi-mythical roots back two millennia to the Han dynasty but they have been most active since the birth of the Qing dynasty, to the overthrow of which they were dedicated. Only in the last 150 years have they increasingly become involved in criminal activity ranging from prostitution and protection rackets to narcotics and, more recently, white collar crime.

The South-east Asian heroin trade was first infiltrated by Chiu Chau Triads in the 1950s: they have retained it as their fiefdom ever since. The largest autonomous cultural grouping of international Chinese expatriates and the Chinese majority in Thailand, not to mention the second largest Chinese ethnic group in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, they are more correctly known as the Teochiu people, originating from a rural area near the seaport of Swatow. Their positions of prominence overseas date back a long way. In Thailand, when it was still known as Siam, they gained high profiles in the government, commerce and industry which they have maintained to the present. They have been involved in opium from around 1875 when a cartel of local merchants won the official contract to retail opium in the French concession in Shanghai, since when they have been the Oriental equivalent of the Mafia in Italy or the Corsicans in France. Their international network of contacts includes not just smugglers but chemists, money launderers, skilled managers and businessmen, politicians and lawyers. They have their own banks which are among the world's most prosperous. By law enforcement agencies, the Triads are considered the largest, most efficient and most secretive criminal organisation on earth.

As the Communists grew in political and military power in post-war China, the future looked bleak for the gangsters of Shanghai, many of whom had taken part in the notorious 1927 massacre of Communists. As Mao's victory looked more and more likely, most of the Shanghai, Canton and coastal city underworlds of China moved to Hong Kong. Amongst them were Chiu Chau Triad gangs, the Green Gang and even Big-eared Tu himself, although he died in 1951. Organised crime exploded in the British colony and No. 4 heroin production began, supplanting the local fashion for opium smoking.

The Chiu Chau Sun Yee On Triad Society already had good contacts in Hong Kong. Their influence was well established in the police force which was still riddled by corruption: it was jokingly referred to until the 1970s as the best police force money could buy. Within a short time, the Green Gang's business was destroyed and the Chiu Chau Triads gained complete domination over the importation of Thai opium and morphine base.

Hong Kong was a good place for the Chiu Chau gangs to do business, for reasons other than their contacts and a morally elastic police force. It was only a short time since 1945, when opium had been made illegal and it was still both available and commonplace. The tens of thousands of refugees crowded into Hong Kong to escape Communism existed in atrocious conditions in squatter shack settlements on the hillsides: opiates were often smoked by them to alleviate their squalor. When opium was prohibited, there was scant detoxification provision and many opium addicts switched to heroin because it gave off no obvious scent. New addicts, especially amongst the young, went straight to heroin.

Most smoked it, the slang expression being to ‘chase the dragon', a term which gained wider international currency from the 1960s onwards. The smoking variety was usually an uncharacteristically pure No. 3 heroin, nicknamed White Dragon Pearl of between 40 and 50 per cent purity.

‘Chasing the dragon' needs little equipment: it is not a luxurious pastime like smoking opium with a jade or ivory pipe. The addict places heroin on a metal surface – a piece of tin can, for example – and heats this over a flame such as a cigarette lighter. As the heroin melts it gives off fumes which are inhaled through a rolled-up paper tube, the ‘dragon chased' being the fumes which waft in the air supposedly like a flying dragon's tail. If an open matchbox cover is used instead of a tube, the addict is said not to be chasing the dragon but ‘playing the mouth-organ'. Some addicts smoked their heroin mixed with barbiturate and added to a tobacco cigarette: as the heroin came in bursts every few puffs, this method was known as ‘shooting the ack-ack gun'.

With mainland Chinese opium supplies drying up in the wake of the Communist take-over, the Chiu Chau expanded their operations and moved into the drug market in Bangkok, operating from within the Chiu Chau community in Thailand. As with most ethnic Chinese groups, there is a strong sense of loyalty amongst expatriate communities. By 1965, they owned a total monopoly over opiates entering and leaving Hong Kong and a virtual monopoly over heroin manufacture, domestic sale and exportation. Since 1972, they have been primarily responsible, with other Triad groups, for most of the South-east Asian heroin reaching Europe and North America: they were, and remain, the force behind the Golden Triangle trade, making them the most powerful players in the market.

Official Hong Kong government figures recorded 80–100,000 drug addicts in the early 1970s from a population of four million: 60,000 were listed as heroin addicts but the estimate is probably conservative. According to DEA statistics in 1972, Hong Kong had 120,000 heroin and 30,000 opium addicts consuming virtually the equivalent amount for all addicts in the USA. It was the highest per capita addiction rate in the world.

So numerous were addicts it was not uncommon to see them. The author, as a child in Hong Kong in the early 1950s, recalls watching rickshaw coolies smoking opium with a pipe or heroin off a tin spoon held over a small lamp in the alleys off Canton Road, within 100 yards or so of the Peninsula Hotel, then the most extravagant and luxurious in the world. They were gaunt men, their sinews taut and muscles bunched by their employment, their skin like parchment. Virtually every one had a sunken chest and prominent ribs: some had faces like newly-dead skulls. Once they had had their pipe, they lay down on the pavement or between the shafts of their rickshaw and slept like corpses. For many, opium or heroin was the only way by which they could face the pain and effort of pulling a laden rickshaw in the subtropical heat. Most addicts were those involved in heavy physical labour such as working in quarries, on construction sites or at the docks: 60 per cent of dock labourers were addicted and used two-thirds of their wages chasing dragons. Most of the commonly seen addicts were street sleepers who lived in doorways, under bridges, huddled in alleys or on open ground. They were almost all male.

The dragon chasers obtained their supplies quite openly. Dealers were to be seen on the streets and some urban areas of Hong Kong even had their own heroin dens. These were not like the opium dens of old but just meeting places where smokers could buy their heroin and smoke it in the company of peers. Many were attached to tea houses or mahjong gambling clubs, the latter being Triad owned and technically illegal but allowed for their cultural importance. The addiction rate being so high, however, prompted the Hong Kong police to run a concerted drive against narcotics in the mid-1960s. The trade was driven out of sight but not otherwise much affected for the Chiu Chau syndicates had contacts and were wealthy. Police bribery was rampant, reaching even to European officers on the force. The level of corruption was maintained until 1974, when the Hong Kong government organised the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) which cleaned up first the police then other government departments which were also riddled with sleaze.

The Hong Kong police and customs service were still finding it nigh on impossible to apprehend smugglers, apart from being hampered by corruption. Until around 1968, morphine base and opium shipments from Thailand were brought in hidden in the cargoes of coastal commercial freighters. After that, Thai fishing fleets were used, often showing on US Navy radar watching the Gulf of Siam and the South China Sea as part of the Vietnam War defences, but they could not be stopped. The drugs were landed on tiny islands – Hong Kong contains over 230 islands – or along the coast of China, concealed under rocks, buried in the sand or dropped offshore to be collected later by Chinese inshore fishing and trading junks which took them on to Hong Kong. This route continued until it was closed in 1975 by the new government of Thailand acting under pressure from the DEA and Washington: once more, foreign aid was ransomed.

Flushed by their successes in South-east Asia, the Chiu Chau Triads expanded. Heroin was smuggled into the USA from Hong Kong on scheduled air flights, the couriers often taking roundabout routings to disguise their origin. In 1969, a Filipino network was founded running heroin to the American Mafia via South and Central America: within three years, another was working through the Caribbean. The heroin was flown to Chile on scheduled passenger flights, the country having a sizeable Chinese population. From Santiago, it was taken to isolated landing strips and smuggled into Paraguay by private light aircraft. Paraguay was then the major transit centre for heroin heading north to America, from both the Far East and Europe, whence it arrived by sea through Argentina. About 70 per cent of America's heroin travelled this route, the remaining 30 per cent going by way of Mexico or Panama.

The narcotics traffic was superbly organised and the Triads, their members bound by powerful oaths, were largely beyond infiltration. In 1971, the trade was being headed in Hong Kong by just five Chiu Chau Triad leaders, of whom Ma Sik-yu (
aka
White Powder Ma), his younger brother, Ma Sik-chun (
aka
Golden Ma) and Ng Sik-ho (
aka
Limpy Ho) were considered the most important.

The Ma brothers were to become more than heroin dealers. Ma Sik-yu began in business in 1967, journeying to the Golden Triangle to purchase his heroin supplies at source, having them smuggled to Hong Kong on his behalf. The next year, General Li Wen-huan met him and, taking a personal liking to him and seeing Ma might be of use to the KMT cause, introduced him to several Taiwanese intelligence agents. By 1970, Ma was running a spy network of informants throughout Chinese communities in South-east Asia who reported on Communist activity and any other intelligence Taiwan might use against China. Ma was the linchpin of the organisation, passing collected data on during regular trips to Taiwan: meantime, Ma Sik-chun founded what was to become the most pro-Taiwanese newspaper in Hong Kong. In exchange for this patriotic service, General Li give them a discount on their heroin for which, it is said, the Taiwanese government made up the loss in armaments.

By 1974, the Mas were the biggest drug barons Hong Kong had ever known. They diverted much of their profits into legitimate businesses such as restaurants, property, trading companies, bars and cinemas. Ma Sik-yu was elected a member at the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club (the pinnacle of respectability) whilst Ma Sik-chun was active in socialite circles. A nephew, Ma Woon-yin, became their third partner and bag-man, carrying money overseas for laundering. With the drop in heroin demand in South-east Asia after the post-Vietnam War departure of the American armed forces, the Mas knew they had to spread their product base so they established an international network for heroin and started liaising with the American Mafia and Japanese organised crime syndicates. With the Hong Kong police closing in, Ma Sik-yu fled to Taiwan in February 1977. Ma Sik-chun and Woon-yin were arrested but subsequently jumped a ridiculously low bail of HK$200,000 each (about £15,000 at the time) and also headed for Taiwan. They reside there to this day, allegedly still controlling a sizeable criminal syndicate although they have not dealt in heroin since 1983 when one of their king-pin traffickers was apprehended by the Hong Kong authorities. Their legitimate businesses continue to flourish in Hong Kong. Taiwan has consistently refused to consider any extradition proceedings.

The only real rival to the Mas was Ng Sik-ho. His criminal career began by his selling No. 3 heroin from a street fruit stall. From this he graduated to a tea house and a rice shop, both fronts for laundering money and selling heroin. His wife was also an experienced dealer. With a flair for business, he set up several heroin partnerships, funding these with loans from other Triad gangsters and legitimate businessmen who saw the chance for a quick and potentially substantial profit. He purchased opium and morphine base from Thailand, converted it into No. 3 heroin for the local market, then re-refined any left over into No. 4, which was exported. By 1970, the profits accruing from the business were estimated to be £15–20 million per annum. He employed over 1000 people, lived in a stylish mansion in Kowloon, owned four restaurants, an illegal gambling casino and numerous street stalls. He had over 150 police officers in his pocket (including at least one senior European officer) and founded the Hong Kong Precious Stone Company which ostensibly imported gemstones from Thailand but, in fact, imported opium as well as gems and acted as a money laundromat.

Ng was the first of the Chinese gangsters to deal directly with the American Mafia whom he met on several occasions in Japan. His arrogance, however, scared them off and they avoided direct contact with him thereafter: it was at this point the Mas more successfully followed his example. Undaunted by this set-back, he built up a heroin network through the Netherlands, distributing his product across Europe and on to the USA, sometimes using as couriers US servicemen in Germany who were themselves dealers.