WITHIN a stone's throw of the world's most inhospitable stretches of water, from which he hoped to reap his fortune, Michael Shen became the latest victim of a simmering but bloody South African shark's fin war.
Shen's second attempt to break into the lucrative market, worth millions to those controlling it, came to an abrupt end just under two months ago when he was ''arrested'' by a group of men posing as police officers.
A charge sheet was waved in front of the businessman, a Taiwanese immigrant to South Africa, and he was informed he was being arrested by the white officers because his company was not registered.
Dragged screaming and kicking from his Cape Town factory, which looked out towards the Atlantic Ocean, not far from the Cape of Good Hope, he was handcuffed, thrown into the back of a car and driven away. That was on May 12.
On May 27, Shen's decomposing body was discovered on wasteland on the outskirts of the city. His throat had been slit. Shen had died for the right to export shark's fins from Cape Town to restaurants and hotels in Hong Kong without paying extortion to the ''Chinese mafia''.
According to an intensive police investigation, Shen, 44, known in Cape Town as a shark's fin tycoon, had been ''arrested'' by a group of whites posing as police officers at the instigation of a Chinese gang boss.
Two of five men later arrested were found to be a serving policeman and a prison guard who had allegedly been hired to kidnap and kill the Taiwanese businessman because he had refused to comply with the mafia's control of the shark's fin market.