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SCMP Reporter

POLICE believe Chun Yeung was the mastermind of a narcotics empire encompassing Canada and the Netherlands.

Chun, 39, led a prized existence, heading Hong Kong's most influential drugs team between 1988 and 1994, because of his contacts and timing.

He was also extremely lucky.

Weeks before being arrested at Kai Tak in January 1994, Chun - in the twilight of his career and owed $10 million by his minions - survived an attack in which two bullets were fired from a .38 calibre pistol into the back of his head in Bangkok.

He crawled to a taxi but barely made it to hospital.

After his recovery, Chun returned to Hong Kong and told associates his days were numbered.

Fearing another attempt on his life, he decided his best chances of survival lay abroad - this meant taking a job in his brother's restaurant in Budapest.

When he was captured before boarding an Aeroflot flight to Moscow, Chun was almost relieved to be in someone's safe custody.

And, presumably, this is what led to him confessing to Senior Inspector Edwina Lau Chi-wai to conspiring to traffic in 277 kilograms of heroin in 1993 with a street value of at least $83 million.

Although peddling this bundle of narcotics earned him a 25-year sentence, it only partially explains his unbridled enterprise.

It spanned the globe.

However, perhaps more interesting than the breadth of his illicit business was how the unorthodox drug tsar got started.

Chun was a small-time electrical appliance store worker in Kunming, Yunnan, who chanced upon the contacts to plug into the notorious operation of Khun Sa, Thailand's drug warlord.

From there, he was able to pour his drugs into the territory, almost directly from the notorious Golden Triangle.

Superintendent Steve Carruthers, Commander of the Financial Investigation Group - a team comprising police and Customs officers with the responsibility of tracing the money trail of drug kingpins - said the seizure of Chun's assets capped a sustained two-year effort.

'We are, of course, very happy with this result,' Mr Carruthers said.

'This was the first case in a long time where we actually had the syndicate head who, in many cases himself organised the drugs from the Golden Triangle.

'We managed to get a large amount of assets and, in this one guy, everything seemed to fall together.' The bulk of Chun's assets were traced to unlicensed remittance centres and to a host of associates' bank accounts - but it took intricate research.

Because the remittance centres are not regulated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, they are not bound by official rules on the reporting of suspicious transactions.

This means detection of illicit funds by police - who suspect the centres are being increasingly used by drug traffickers - is extremely difficult.

It is understood police will intensify their lobbying of the Government for the introduction of laws to plug the remittance centre loophole. Indeed, this topic is likely to be discussed at a meeting next month in Japan of the International Financial Action Task Force.



Drug king rode luck to create an empire