When
a state decides to embark on exploiting criminal activity, it is extremely
difficult to shut down. They have
everything that a criminal needs but usually cannot easily source without
indicting himself. For the criminal, it
is a dream come true. You pay only for
delivery.
The
only question remaining is just how broad is their ambitions. The meth trade can be a sweet little monopoly
if priced properly to discourage independents.
Counterfeiting is similar. A
secure supply is critical.
This
is just one other way that the North Korean regime makes itself hugely
unwelcome and clearly opens the door for retribution.
North
Korea's Huge Role In Global Meth Trade Revealed In Insane Case Involving
Mercenaries And Gang
At first glance, the meeting that occurred on January 24, 2013
could have been about any ordinary business deal. A multinational organization
based in Hong Kong had cornered the market on a lucrative commodity.
They needed distributors to bring their product to America, and so
the organization dispatched a pair of representatives to Bangkok to meet with a
potential client. That client claimed to have all the right connections in New
York and money to burn.
But the deal was not ordinary. The businessmen were allegedly
members of a triad crime syndicate, the would-be client was an informant for
the DEA, and their lucrative commodity was a massive stockpile of ultra-pure
North Korean methamphetamine stashed somewhere in the Philippines. The
arrangement would eventually come to involve a shady pair of British drug
merchants living in Thailand, the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang, and a
team of assassins led by an ex-Army sniper nicknamed "Rambo."
Two federal conspiracy cases unsealed in late 2013 paint a lurid
picture of a stranger-than-fiction international underworld that uses North
Korea as a haven for meth production. According to court documents and DEA
sources, the meeting in Thailand last January was a pivotal moment in an
ongoing investigation that stretches from Southeast Asia to West Africa. So far
eight men have been arrested and extradited to face conspiracy charges in
Manhattan federal court.
News of the cases was widely reported in the days after the
indictments were revealed, but scrutiny of the evidence and extensive
interviews with ex-diplomats, DEA officials, and independent experts has shed
light on the shadowy dynamics of the international drug trade that extends
through North Korea. Authorities have suspected for years that state-owned
factories are used to make meth on an industrial scale. But now it appears the
North Korean regime is outsourcing the work to transnational drug cartels,
allowing them to operate with impunity inside the hermit kingdom in exchange
for a cut of the action.
“The overwhelming preponderance of evidence points to official
North Korean involvement,” said Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a postdoctoral
research fellow at Harvard and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution who studies illicit activity in North Korea. “The triads, the
Yakuza in Japan — the question is one of control. I don’t think North Korea
exercises much if any control over these groups. It’s an arrangement for mutual
benefit, and it lasts as long as it’s convenient for both sides.”
TONS OF BINGDU
North Korea’s participation in the illicit drug trade dates back
at least to the 1970s. After defaulting on international debt, former leader
Kim Il-sung (grandfather of current dictator Kim Jong-un) reportedly ordered
his embassies to become self-sufficient, and so diplomats exploited their legal
immunity and began smuggling hash and heroin. But by the early ‘90s, a number
of DPRK diplomatic personnel had been busted and booted from their host
nations, forcing the regime to change tactics.
At about the same time, meth started to become increasingly
popular in the United States and Asia as economic collapse and famine gripped
North Korea, creating the perfect storm incentivizing North Korea to produce
the drug themselves. A 2007 report to Congress describes how Kim Jong-il
created an agency called “Bureau 39” to oversee all “crime-for-profit activity”
in the country, including illicit drugs, counterfeit currency, and contraband
cigarettes. Massive pharmaceutical factories staffed by trained scientists were
repurposed into meth labs capable of churning out bingdu, North Korean slang for meth, by the ton. Police
intercepted large North Korean drug shipments destined for the Philippines,
Japan, Australia, and elsewhere.
“These are high-quality, chemically pure shipments that are
professionally packaged and shipped in large quantities,” Greitens told VICE
News. “That’s been the defining trait of North Korean meth seizures since the
late ‘90s.”
In early 2006, North Korea staged a public crackdown on meth. The
regime issued a decree announcing that all drug offenders would be sentenced to
death regardless of their “status, services, or achievements.” Meth is still
common — defectors have described a grim, surreal world where bingdu is used as
medicine for headaches — but international seizures have tapered off. In a
report to Congress last year, the State Department stated there were “no
confirmed instances of large-scale drug trafficking” involving North Korea in
2010, and “if such activity persists, it is certainly on a smaller scale.”
But David Asher, a former advisor to the National Security Council
who helped develop the US strategy against Kim Jong-il's illicit activities,
suspects the public crackdown was all for show. More likely, Asher says, it was
a move to consolidate power.
“There’s no such thing as organized crime in North Korea that
doesn’t involve the government,” Asher says. “Crime is disobeying the
leadership. They passed a law solely to fool the West, and passed it in order
to control the business internally to make sure people who were in the party
weren’t operating behind the back of the leadership. It’s a Sopranos state. If they find
somebody going around the senior leadership, that person gets whacked.”
The ongoing DEA investigation suggests the meth trade is still
thriving in North Korea and is still ultimately controlled by the regime. The
difference now is exemplified by men like Ye Tiong Tan Lim, a slight, balding
53-year-old Chinese man with Coke-bottle glasses. According to court documents,
Lim and his 41-year-old Filipino associate told the DEA informant that their
bosses in Hong Kong had exclusive access to meth manufactured in North Korea.
“It’s only us who can get from NK,” Lim said, according to his
indictment. “The NK government already burned all the labs. Only our labs are
not closed…. To show Americans that they are not selling it any more, they
burned it. Then they transfer [the meth] to another base.”
Lim allegedly claimed his organization had squirreled away a ton
of North Korean meth somewhere in the Philippines. He emphasized that the
supply was limited for the time being due to the political situation in North
Korea.
“We cannot get things out from North Korea right now,” Lim said.
“We already anticipated this thing would happen between America, Korea, North
Korea, South Korea, Japan — all the satellites are now — we cannot bring out
our goods right now.”
DEA informants agreed to buy 100 kilos from Lim, who believed the
load would then be sent to New York. Orchestrating a drug shipment that large
and complex requires serious logistics and security planning, so the DEA
enlisted the help of another gang in Thailand.
That’s where Rambo came in.
SMOKING DRAGONS
Last September, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment
charging five former elite American and European military snipers with
conspiring to import cocaine for a Colombian cartel, and for plotting to
assassinate a DEA agent. Preet Bharara, the US Attorney in Manhattan, described
the men as “an international band of mercenary marksmen who enlisted their
elite military training to serve as hired guns for evil ends.” The case, he
said, was “ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel.”
That makes the main character 48-year-old Joseph Manuel Hunter,
a.k.a. Rambo. A former US Army sniper instructor and senior drill sergeant,
Hunter has a bald head and the build of a middle linebacker. According to court
documents, Hunter retired from the Army in 2004 and recruited a team of elite
soldiers to work for him as a band of murderers-for-hire. Undercover DEA agents
posing as Colombian drug lords last year hired Hunter as their head of
security.
The indictment in Hunter’s case makes no mention of North Korean
meth, but DEA sources told VICE News that the cases are intertwined. Hunter is
charged with conspiring to import cocaine, not methamphetamine, but documents
in Hunter’s case and Lim’s case both describe two very similar, highly
sophisticated smuggling rings based in Thailand. Both investigations began in
January of 2013 and unfold along similar timelines.
Jerika Richardson, spokeswoman for the US Attorney in Manhattan,
declined to answer questions about Hunter and the North Korean case. According
to a senior DEA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he
wasn't allowed to discuss an ongoing investigation, Hunter’s organization
offered contract killings as a “bonus service.” Their primary role was akin to
that of a subcontractor, guarding and smuggling drugs and weapons on behalf of
various transnational criminal groups.
That sounds suspiciously similar to the services allegedly offered
to an undercover DEA agent by Scott Stammers, a 44-year-old British man living
in Thailand.
According to court documents, the DEA’s informant hired Stammers
to be the middleman in charge of moving Lim’s meth from Southeast Asia to New
York. Stammers was initially skeptical about the deal, telling the DEA’s
informant that North Korean meth is “expensive first of all, and it’s so hard
to get in.”
Stammers eventually agreed to participate, however, and soon introduced
the DEA informant to Phillip Shackles, another Englishman who allegedly had
experience moving DPRK meth. Documents show that Shackles sent the DEA
informant emails that used “DVDs” as a code word for meth. Shackles claimed he
knew someone that “used to work in North Korea making DVDs,” and said he had
“good connects there for buying huge amounts.”
The notion of outsiders entering North Korea to manufacture meth
seems improbable, but it's not unprecedented. In 2011, an FBI investigation
dubbed Smoking Dragon —government agents must have a great time naming their operations — targeted a Chinese black-market merchant in Los Angeles
named Yi Qing Chen. In addition to peddling anti-aircraft missiles and other
arms, Chen sold knockoff cigarettes, counterfeit $100 bills, and extremely pure
methamphetamine — all North Korean specialties.
Bob Hamer, a former FBI agent and the lead undercover investigator
in Smoking Dragon, recalled how Chen was rounding up investors to finance a
meth superlab in North Korea that would eventually be converted into a
laundry-detergent factory. Hamer described a sort of leasing agreement with
corrupt North Korean officials, and said he was even offered a tour of the
facility.
“We had a detailed scenario about where it would go and how we’d
set up this factory,” Hamer told VICE News. “They made it pretty clear to me
that nothing was happening in North Korea without people in authority knowing
it was happening and allowing it to happen.”
98 PERCENT PURE
On April 5, 2013 Shackles and Stammers received two samples of
North Korean meth allegedly supplied by Lim. One was “clear and bigger shards
and harder to break,” according to Stammers’ description in court documents,
and the other was “whiter and in smaller granules.” The samples tested 96
percent and 98 percent pure, respectively. The following week, Stammers sent
another message saying his bosses sought to contact “the NK supplier,” and
inquiring about “prices and manufacturing quantities/capabilities.”
After the DEA negotiated to buy 100 kilos from Lim, Shackles and
Stammers allegedly arranged for a man named Adrian Valkovic to serve as “ground
commander,” overseeing the shipment when it arrived in Thailand. A tall and
intimidating Eastern European with tattoos poking out of his collar and
sleeves, Valkovic used a pseudonym, and introduced himself as the
sergeant-at-arms of the “Outlaw Motorcycle Club.” He promised eight men from his
gang to help with transportation, repackaging, logistics, and security.
On August 16, undercover DEA agents met with two of Hunter’s
alleged assassins in Thailand. The men plotted a hit on a DEA agent and his
source in Liberia, a shipping hub for drugs in West Africa. They planned to
make the murder “look like a bad robbery,” and disguise themselves using
“highly sophisticated latex face masks” that, according to the prosecutors,
“can make the wearer appear to be of another race.”
The following day, also in Thailand, DEA informants met with
Shackles, Stammers, and Valkovic. As a cover for the incoming drug shipment,
they planned to host a party or photo shoot on a yacht docked at a marina near
a large US Naval Base. Lim’s organization had already sent along 4,700 kilos of
tea on a “test run” to ensure the real load went through smoothly. They didn’t
realize the DEA was watching every move.
Hunter was arrested on September 25 after DEA agents pointed him
out to Thai police at a country club in the southern province of Phuket.
Valkovic was arrested November 19 in Thailand, and the rest of the group was
taken into custody the following day. All were extradited to New York, and are
currently detained, awaiting trial. At a subsequent hearing in Manhattan, prosecutors
described more than 100 gigabits of digital evidence in the case, including
emails, recorded phone calls, and undercover video footage. Citing the need to
protect witnesses and maintain “the confidentiality of ongoing investigations,”
prosecutors requested unusually tight restrictions on pretrial evidence in
Lim’s case. Last month, they got it in the form of a "protective order
pertaining to discovery." The reason given was that the evidence includes
"certain materials that, if disseminated to third parties, could, among
other things, pose a threat to public safety and the safety of witnesses, and
could impede ongoing investigations."
As the cases proceed and more evidence is made public, North Korea
watchers say they will be looking closely for further insight into the current
state of drug trafficking in the reclusive regime. Raphael Perl, author of a
detailed 2007 Congressional report on North Korean illicit activity, suspects
North Korean officials are still directly involved with manufacturing and
exporting meth, though the activity is now likely done in concert with
organized crime groups.
“Once you become involved, you remain addicted to the trade,” Perl
says. “It’s a whole military hierarchy that’s involved in both the distribution
and production of methamphetamine. It’s a big time industry. Why would they
close down a profitable industry if they can get away with it?”
Combine the secrecy of drug cartels with the secrecy North Korean
government, and it becomes virtually impossible to know the full extent of the
regime’s involvement with meth production. The recent cases in New York offer
just an idea. Although Lim, Hunter, and their alleged co-conspirators are now
behind bars, the limited evidence available suggests they each belonged to larger
crime organizations that presumably remain in business and still have access to
a steady supply of ultra-pure North Korean bingdu.
Although the DEA seized a few kilos during the course of their
investigation, the one-ton stockpile in the Philippines described by Lim
remains unaccounted for.
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