IF there were a Guinness book of records on crime he would merit several lengthy entries. Among hardened detectives of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau, he was begrudgingly ranked high up for his daring, flamboyance, organisational skills and surgical execution. He gathered around him some of the toughest gangsters in Hong Kong and the mainland, men almost as notorious as himself.
Some of his alleged kidnapping victims - snatched, trussed up like cattle and held in captivity until the payment of billion-dollar ransoms - were among the wealthiest and most powerful business tycoons in Asia.
But the saga of blood and mayhem that Cheung Tze-keung, 43, allegedly started in 1991 has finally come to an end. When Xinhua and the official state television news devoted unusually long reports last week to his arrest in late January on the mainland and subsequent confession along with 17 other alleged accomplices, their fate was sealed.
Four days ago, the Guangdong Security Bureau announced the arrest of 14 more people, including Yip Kai-yuk and Yip Kai-chung, believed to be the brothers of violent gangster Yip Kai-foon. According to Xinhua, the bureau has charged Cheung and his gang - 18 of whom are Hong Kong residents - with a range of kidnappings, murders, robberies, extortion and the smuggling of enough explosives to blow up Central.
The offences in Hong Kong and the mainland were committed in the past eight years, according to Security Bureau director Chen Shaoji, who stressed that all the men would be tried in a mainland court. Now the wheels of mainland justice are gaining momentum, Cheung and his cohorts can only hope their imminent executions are swift and efficient.
'This is the end for him,' says a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference deputy with special interests in law and order. 'The outcome is pretty much pre-ordained. There is almost no chance that he would escape the death penalty, or that he would be extradited and tried in Hong Kong.' According to the deputy, speaking on condition of anonymity, Cheung's arrest is part of President Jiang Zemin's 'avowed crackdown on organised crime in Hong Kong and Macau during the unification of the three places. He will be made an example to others'.
Mainland and Hong Kong authorities have been united on the question of where the trials will take place, with Police Commissioner Eddie Hui Ki-on already ruling out seeking their return to Hong Kong until after their trial. However, if past mainland cases are a guide, their trial will be followed soon afterwards by their execution. There will be no return except, perhaps, in a body bag.