Mexican drug gangs target Southeast Asia

Mexican drug cartels see Asia as a lucrative market, due to the huge profits to be made there and the regional trade agreements that inadvertently make it easier for them to smuggle.

The drug trade is increasingly rampant in Asia, leading to a significant increase in the number of contraband seized. In East and Southeast Asia alone, authorities seized a total of 254 million methamphetamine tablets in 2013, an eightfold increase in just five years, the Financial Times reported earlier this week.

International officials warn that law enforcement agencies in Asia are ill-prepared to deal with the growing drug trade.

Hong Kong seizes more than 500kg of cocaine from Mexican gang. Photo: Dickson Lee/ SCMP

“Police and customs officials in Asia often don’t have much contact with the Americas, and often lack knowledge of Latin American gangs, and they don’t know what they’re up against,” said Jeremy Douglas, representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “They haven’t been very active internationally, but they’re about to be.”

For smugglers who are caught, the risks are enormous. Some Southeast Asian countries punish drug-related crimes with the death penalty.

The Philippines, which has debated the use of the death penalty for drug-related crimes, will test the waters this month with a case in which Mexican Horatio Hernandez Hernandez is accused of being a high-ranking member of the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.

At a regional meeting in Bangkok in August, representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) raised the red alert on drug trafficking there, saying that despite the region’s potential for economic and trade growth, the increased connectivity between countries has made the border areas vulnerable to becoming “transit stations” for drug smuggling.

The Sinaloa cartel, which is believed to be a major drug supply hub in the Asia-Pacific region, is led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, who escaped from a Mexican prison in July.

The Jalisco New Generation cartel, a newcomer to Mexico’s drug trade, has emerged as a major player in the underworld in recent months after shooting down a military plane. The gang is targeting markets in Hong Kong and Japan, according to Canacintra, a Mexican organization.

The Asia-Pacific market is more lucrative for gangs than traditional markets. In Hong Kong, a kilogram of cocaine can sell for three times what it does in the United States. In Australia, it can fetch up to six times the price, according to police and experts.

Meanwhile, financial crime investigators say gangs will closely study regional trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to see if they open up certain routes or reduce tariffs on certain goods, giving them a way to hide their drugs and repatriate their profits.

Any policy that increases the volume and efficiency of trade also risks increasing opportunities and opening the way for criminals to traffic drugs and launder money," said Bill Majcher, who has worked with the US and Canadian federal police.

"Over the past few decades, I have seen a rapid increase in money laundering, as criminals have learned to exploit agreements that open up transnational trade zones and treaties between countries," said an anonymous investigator.

Robert Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies and an expert on the region’s relations with China, said the agreements would increase the volume of goods traded and the number of banks and companies that conduct transactions across the Pacific, which would in turn open up opportunities for criminal organizations to traffic drugs.

However, he also stressed that the closer relations between the countries thanks to the signed agreements will "indirectly strengthen law enforcement activities and the trans-Pacific legal framework, helping to fight drug cartels".

According to VNE