Criminal Planet (2021) s01e02 Episode Script

-International organized
crime has no natural predator.
-[ Shouting ] -Crime
syndicates are expanding
and forging alliances
across the globe.
-[ Foreign ]
-As law enforcement
struggle to stop them,
up to 5% of the global
economy is now in criminal hands.
-Hello!
-I'm Paul Radu,
and for the past 20
years I have investigated
international organized
crime in the tune of 400 billion,
and this is a very, very small
slice of what's really going on.
-I think there are
some people --
-Let's go, let's go.
-In this series I'm working with
a team of reporters
around the world
-Are you angry with yourself
for -- for being part of this?
-to discover how a
generation of international gangs
are redrawing the criminal map.
♪♪
♪♪
[ Vehicle approaching ]
♪♪
[ Foreign ]
-So we're in the
Golden Triangle district,
and the police have
set up a checkpoint
to search cars
coming down this road,
searching for drugs
and other contraband.
My country, Thailand,
is at the frontline
of the world's
fastest-growing drugs market;
the meth trade in Southeast
Asia is worth $60 billion a year.
♪♪
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♪♪
They're searching every
single car that comes past,
and everyone seems pretty okay
with their cars being searched,
which kinda says to me that,
you know, drug searches are
just a thing that happen here.
It's so common.
-Thai authorities
seized a record
139 tons of meth last year.
Towns like this, in the
heart of Southeast Asia's
notorious Golden Triangle,
are where 80% of
drugs enter Thailand.
♪♪
Ya ba, a cheap version
of meth laced with caffeine,
sells for under $2 a
pill on the Thai market.
Pure meth -- "ice" -- is
trafficked through Thailand
to countries as
far as Australia,
where a gram
sells for up to $600.
This area, where the borders of
Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet,
was dubbed the Golden
Triangle by the CIA in the '70s,
as it became the world's
second-largest producer
of heroin.
Now, the Golden Triangle
is the largest producer
of meth in the world.
Production is
centered in Myanmar
[ Indistinct shouting ]
where large parts of
the country are controlled
by a patchwork
of ethnic militias
who fund their insurgencies
through meth trafficking.
♪♪
-The Golden Triangle
is at the intersection
of commercial interests,
political interests,
but really nobody governs
there except for organized crime.
You also have criminal groups
operating there for centuries.
Traditionally they were engaged
into the trafficking of heroin,
they moved into meth because
meth is much easier to produce.
There's blueprints for meth
labs all over the Internet,
so it's -- it's a very
handy drug, it's like --
almost like 3D printing drugs.
The precursors always come
from China, so what happens
is you have large factories
in China manufacturing,
producing these precursors,
exporting them across borders.
For Chinese factories,
it's big business.
China's breeding a sort of
asymptomatic corruption,
in the sense that, you know,
they are tolerating this
manufacture of precursors,
because nothing really, really
bad happens on Chinese soil.
These precursors
will be used elsewhere
and will affect people
elsewhere in the world.
-Most Chinese precursor
chemicals end up in the hands
of a militia called the Wa Army,
who were formed
after the collapse of
the Communist Party in Myanmar.
-[ Shouting indistinctly ]
-Backed by the Chinese
state with weapons and funds,
the Wa Army have been
dubbed by the U.S. government,
"the most heavily armed
narco traffickers in the world."
China's drive to expand
their power in the region
comes at the cost
of exacerbating
a dangerous epidemic.
In 2020 authorities operating
in the Wa Army's territory
made the largest
seizure of synthetic drugs
in the history of
Southeast Asia,
including 200
million meth tablets.
Drug militias like the Wa Army
are considered to be
Thailand's biggest security threat.
♪♪
[ Foreign ]
Multimillion dollar
seizures from the Wa Army
are a weekly occurrence
on the Thai border,
and the police have
just made a fresh catch.
Holy shit, that's
a lot of drugs.
Sacks full of drugs.
Army, police, and being
guarded very seriously.
So, I'd heard a lot about
how drugs are packaged
in these tea bag containers,
'cause they hold
exactly 100 grams,
and this is the real thing.
6,700,000 tablets of ya ba,
packed in tea bags.
Three million tons
of Myanmar tea
cross international
borders every year,
so it's the perfect
commodity to hide meth in.
"100 kilograms ketamine" --
we're looking at $26
million worth of ketamine
and ya ba right here.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
So, this is pretty interesting,
the 999 five stars
stamped onto the
the packet of drugs,
that's actually the
logo of the syndicate
behind the production
of this batch of drugs.
The triple nine
and five star stamp
is the symbol of the Wa Army.
♪♪
The Thai army has
the impossible job
of stopping the Wa
Army's drug smugglers
coming across the
border with Myanmar,
which is over 1,500 miles long
and covered by dense jungle.
♪♪
♪♪
[ Presenter ]
[ Officer ]
The rangers must
watch their every step --
they are patrolling one of the
most heavily landmined areas
in the world.
In the 1970s,
millions were planted
to stop communist insurgents.
Now the land mines are a
danger to both the smugglers
and the rangers.
[ Ranger speaking over radio ]
Mm-hmm.
Army rangers have
laid even more mines,
called claymores, to stop
the Wa Army smugglers.
So -- Ah, shit!
[ Laughs ] Oh, I
would not wanna be
a drug trafficker --
this is really difficult
to walk through.
Ahh! Shit!
[ Both laughing ]
Shit! And that is why
you don't traffic drugs.
Oh, fucking hell!
The scouts who are bringing
the drugs across into Thailand
would shoot this sign
to inform local people
that they've brought
the drugs across,
and that they're
ready for collection.
They'll leave them here and
then go back to the Myanmar side.
But that is a lot
of bullet holes.
As so many smugglers
invade this jungle,
the army rangers have
given them a nickname.
♪♪
-Despite exhaustive daily
patrols in landmined jungles,
the Thai army intercept
less than 10% of drugs
that are flooding
into the country.
It's crazy to think that
there are thousands
and thousands of miles that
separate Thailand and Myanmar,
and it's patrolled by just a
handful of people in each area.
These guys are the guys
who are on the front line,
and they're doing
a fantastic job,
but, you know, some
of them are pretty young,
there's not that many of them,
and the borders are
extremely porous.
Five miles north, and
sitting right on the border
with Myanmar, is Mae Sai.
♪♪
Crime journalist Piyawat
has become a
local celebrity here
after decades of uncovering
the scale of the meth trade
that cuts right
through this town.
Sometimes he
arrives at crime scenes
before the authorities do,
which has cost him
quite a bit of trouble
with the authorities, who
-- who are always like,
"Why did you get
here before we did?
Are you involved in this?"
Insider knowledge is
the key to understanding
how the smugglers manage to
move hundreds of tons of meth
across the border
without being detected.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
-We're going off-road
to meet a former spotter
for drug runners -- he's
now a police informant,
tipping them off
about trafficking
on the Thai-Myanmar border.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
So, despite that
amazing view over there,
this is one of the key
routes for drug traffickers
to bring drugs into Thailand.
There's two villages
on either side,
but the easiest way is just to
come straight down the middle.
And they'll walk
all that distance.
♪♪
Entire villages in
the Golden Triangle
have been economically dependent
on drug trafficking for decades.
The Thai authorities
can't arrest their way
out of the problem,
so as a deterrent
they've imposed
some of the toughest
drug laws in the world.
In a country where
drug trafficking
is punishable by death,
and minor possession
can land you
20 years in jail,
I could be thrown in prison
for meeting a trafficker
and refusing to
reveal my sources.
-The meth problem
is very much hidden
because the government
wants to keep it secret.
Journalists can't really reveal,
expose this type of trafficking
if they want Thailand
to keep on being,
you know, a -- a
magnet for -- for tourists.
Thailand is actually one of
the countries in that region
with very little
investigative reporting,
and if they go there and try
to -- to do something about it,
they can, you know,
get thrown in jail as well.
[ Radio chatter ]
♪♪
-Despite the risk,
a team of journalists from VICE
has managed to gain access
to a major drug
trafficker distributing meth
across Thailand.
♪♪
To avoid any lengthy
prison sentence,
the film crew must
remain anonymous.
Their communications
are encrypted,
and I'm not allowed
to know their identities.
For the trafficker, allowing
cameras into his world
is a matter of life and death.
-WY is known as "the world
is yours" amongst users,
and while there are many urban
legends about the trademark,
according to the American DEA,
it's the stamp of the Wa Army.
♪♪
♪♪
-To understand why drug
trafficking is so dangerous
and controversial in Thailand,
you have to go back to 2003.
Thai prime minister at the
time, Thaksin Shinawatra,
declared ya ba dealers and
users "enemies of the state."
♪♪
Mass arrests and extrajudicial
assassinations followed.
[ Knocking, man
speaking native language ]
Over half of the
2,500 people killed
were later found to
have no connection
to drug trafficking.
-Thousands of
people were arrested,
many people were
put behind bars,
and it was just, you
know, it's -- it's similar
to what's going on nowadays
with the the Philippines,
right, with Duterte,
it's exactly what Thaksin
was doing in -- in Thailand.
These people think that
they can solve a problem
through violence, through
force, through sheer force,
and that's a very, very
bad approach to crime
because crime is a system.
-It's difficult to overstate
the effect these killings
have had on poor
communities in Thailand.
So this is Si, or Pepsi,
he's gonna be my guide getting
through this Klong Toey area.
I've come to Klong Toey, a
slum in the heart of Bangkok,
which was once known
as the ground zero
of Thailand's war on drugs.
[ Rapping in native language ]
♪♪
-Local rapper 19Tyger
was 12 years old
when his parents,
who were both dealing drugs,
mysteriously disappeared.
-[ Rapping in native language ]
-Tyger's invited me on
the set of his latest video,
"Land Rover," and by the
looks of things, some dodgy shit
is about to go down --
there's a beat-up Benz,
big black bag full
of drugs or money.
-Gun. Again, gun, hands,
gun out, bag, right?
-[ Foreign ] -To the
head, to the head.
[ Clicking, dial tone ]
-The new Range Rover,
the new Range Rover.
-[ Rapping in native language ]
♪♪
[ Jet engines
whining in distance ]
♪♪
-With the highest
number of ya ba users
in the world per capita,
Thailand's bloody war on drugs
hasn't curbed the
appetite for meth,
it's driven it deeper
underground.
-Possession of
just a few ya ba pills
can lead to a 20
year prison sentence,
so parties like these
are incredibly secretive,
and users must keep
their identities hidden.
♪♪
-Thailand's Draconian drug laws
allow the police to
conduct random drug tests
on all its citizens
in public places.
Users who test positive are
arrested and often imprisoned.
This has caused an explosion
in Thailand's prison population,
in the last 15 years it's
ballooned from 80,000
to 350,000;
70% are serving
time for drug offenses.
-In Thailand, you know,
there's -- there's people
behind bars who are
convicted for almost nothing,
for quantities of drugs
that in -- in other countries
would -- would be
completely ignored.
And, unfortunately, you
know, our population of jails
will only solidify
criminal, uh, connections
between people who
are there behind bars.
Criminals will be
there to offer them jobs.
They're foot soldiers
for organized crime
because this is how it works.
Thailand and other
countries in Southeast Asia
are breeding the new
organized crime groups
who are gonna be more audacious,
who are gonna be more skilled
when it comes to
cross-border business.
-The surge in drug
trafficking in Thailand
isn't an isolated problem,
it's part of a vast
international meth empire
that has the entire
region in its grip.
But the question is, who
exactly is pulling the strings?
You -- you're the guy who knows
what we're talking about here,
how big is this industry now?
-If you look at the whole
drug economy, meth economy,
Southeast -- East
and Southeast Asia,
we estimate, conservative
range, $60 billion a year.
Obviously that money is
spread along that chain,
but it's heavily
concentrated on the one end,
in the product--
producers' hands, right?
The guys who are
producing a lot of this meth,
the big, big, organized
crime groups,
they would hold
billions of dollars,
because they're able to do
deals with Japanese Yakuza,
Australian biker gangs or Mafia.
-I see. Yeah, so this
truly is transnational,
in the sense that
everyone involved,
the -- the people who
are doing the precursors,
then the production,
then the selling,
and to the final consumer.
-Yeah, so they're using
the region for what
it offers them --
chemicals in one place,
production in another,
shipment through
another, market in another.
And then, of course, they
have all this money to launder,
which they do in other places.
-Who are they, and
how do they operate?
-There's been
names kicked around
the last couple of years,
of -- of some of them,
and particularly one,
which is kind of a
collection of triad interests,
called Sam Gor.
These are the gentlemen that
saw the opportunity with synthetics,
and the opportunity
to scale it up
and concentrate production
in the Golden Triangle
using their old
historic connections,
the territory that they -- they
can get their hands on there.
-The Sam Gor syndicate,
you know, they control
about 40% of the meth trade
in the Asia-Pacific region,
in the Golden Triangle.
They've been heavily
involved in the heroin trade,
and then they moved
into synthetics and meth,
and fentanyl, and ketamine.
The Sam Gor syndicate
is made of five groups.
These are triads.
Triads who are there
for hundreds of years,
they've always had
their connections
to Hong Kong, to China,
and Hong Kong itself is a place
that helps the Golden
Triangle launder money,
because Hong Kong is
great for creating companies
that are used in this
financial infrastructure
that allows the
money laundering,
large scale, to go on.
The police know about
the Sam Gor syndicate,
th-they've been investigating,
you know, the --
the triads, and --
and the components
of this syndicate for --
for many, many years.
But you can't really
arrest Sam Gor,
because Sam Gor,
it's not just a leader,
it's more like a -- like a Hydra
that has heads everywhere,
like in, you know, in
the financial industry,
in the meth, in connections with
other organized crime groups.
So, it's really,
really hard to deal
with someone like
the Sam Gor group
because there's
no law enforcement
that can match them.
[ Thunder rumbling ]
-The Sam Gor have
a heavy presence
in the towns that sit
on Thailand's border.
They launder their money
through gambling and prostitution
in towns like Tachileik.
♪♪
We've made contact
with a local call girl
whose clients operate
in this underworld.
♪♪
♪♪
[ Singing in native language ]
-This call girl's
testimony shows how
Chinese syndicates like Sam Gor
use the lawless towns
of Tachileik as a base
for their international
operations.
-The Sam Gor syndicate,
they control banks,
they control factories,
and they have
access to the materials
that are needed
to create the meth.
And while the cheap meth
stays in the Golden Triangle
and in Thailand, the
more expensive meth
will go to places like
Australia and New Zealand
because you can make
billions on the back of that.
I mean, it's -- it's
good business
because they have very,
very good connections
with gangs in Australia,
gangs in New Zealand,
gangs in -- in other
countries in Southeast Asia.
-Sam Gor works with
the Wa State militia
to traffic Myanmar
meth into Thailand,
where it then travels
throughout the rest
of Southeast Asia and beyond.
The biggest profits
are made in Australia,
which has the
highest use of meth
in the English speaking world.
By the time it enters Australia,
the price per kilo shoots
up from $8,000 to $200,000.
-Ice, it's intersecting with
every aspect of Australian life.
Now the prime minister has
commissioned a new task force
to tackle this national crisis.
-The market is so
lucrative in Australia,
the Sam Gor share their
profits by collaborating
with the notorious biker gangs
who run the country's
distribution network.
Western Australia
has the nation's
highest rate of meth use.
Detective Inspector
Gordon Fairman
of the Western Australian
police was willing to talk to me
about the scale of the
epidemic over there.
-Meth has become the challenge
in the Australian drug scene,
and we've been escalating
our meth action plans
in all of the capital
cities around the country
to address that.
We have recently intercepted
10, 15, 25 kilo loads,
although last year
there was a significant
load of nearly a ton.
In Western
Australia particularly,
distribution of meth is almost
exclusively controlled by OMCG,
or Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.
They're highly
structured, highly violent,
and highly criminal.
What we see is
organized crime networks
who are wearing patches.
-Today, the Western
Australian gang crime squad
are hitting the trade
where it hurts the most --
the local biker gangs who
run the distribution networks.
-Part of our gang crime
strategy, as you all know,
is we got reach into WA, we
can go anywhere at any time
and cause disruption
against OMCGs.
So, mission for today, at
least two warrants completed,
up to four warrants,
but [bleep] will go in as
one team to the first address,
secure that, and then
move on to the second place.
-What we've decided to do is
we'll come in from Welcome Road,
and it does look like
there's CCTV on the house,
but the gate itself
looks pretty solid,
and we'll basically --
we'll walk in behind 505.
[ Indistinct radio chatter ]
-Beware, guys, target address
is on your left on the corner.
♪♪
-The Western Australian police
are making historic
cache seizures.
In just six weeks,
they've seized $32 million
connected to the meth
trade and the biker gangs.
-Thank you, ladies
and gentlemen,
and what you see
in front of you today
is just short of $9
million cash seized
over the last couple of weeks.
There is a third, current
seizure being counted,
that we believe will be
the highest single seizure
in Australian history --
in excess of $20 million.
This money has been
derived from the profits
of selling methamphetamine
within Western Australia.
Our intent is relentless,
to target the individuals
that peddle the death trade
that is methamphetamine.
-There's vast amounts
of money to be made,
and let's be clear about
why people are involved
in this trade, this is --
this is purely about money.
And there are huge amounts
of money that can be made.
If you can control the
largest market share,
then you can make
the largest profit;
so, in a limited market
like Western Australia,
you know, you can flood the
market and you could maybe
double the amount of
meth that's available.
If you can improve
your supply chain
by having more outlets and
having more transit routes,
then you can take over
a larger market share.
Most of the gangs that
we're dealing with here
are internationally represented,
they're not local gangs --
we're talking about
the Hells Angels,
we're talking about the
Comancheros, the Bandidos,
that have an international
footprint anyway.
Our investigations, over
the last two years particularly,
have identified a
number of high profile
former OMCG members
who have left Australia
and are now resident in other
countries around the world.
One of those
countries is Thailand.
-Bikie violence
spilled onto the streets
of Pattaya in September,
with three Australians
involved in a vicious
assault on two Thai men.
-Profits from the $60 billion
meth market are so huge,
even astronomical seizures
don't hinder the trade.
The Sam Gor syndicate
has pioneered a terrifying
transnational alliance
between Burmese militias,
Thai drug runners, and
now Australian biker gangs.
It's reached unprecedented
heights of power
by exploiting
political conflicts
and instability in the region.
-If you really want
to tackle this problem,
you've got to
look at a syndicate
like the Sam Gor syndicate
and follow the money,
follow the companies,
follow all that.
It would take a huge
network of law enforcement
from all over the world
to build a worthy enemy
for the Sam Gor group.
I'm talking about real
international cooperation,
not just by going in,
you know, raiding places,
arresting people,
putting them in cages,
in jails and all that,
because this is much
bigger than just that.
Y-you've gotta look
at supply chains,
you've gotta look at, you know,
how these businesses are run
from a financial standpoint.
These are very complex problems
that the world is not
really addressing right now.
I think what the Thai
government is trying to hide,
to -- to protect,
is their inability
and their lack of success
when it comes to fighting drugs.
At the same time,
w-we're seeing lately
that there is quite
a bit of unrest
because the new
generations in Thailand,
they have different perceptions
and they see that the government
is not always
working in their favor.
This is, again, the
outcome of a closed society
where you don't allow people
their freedoms, ultimately.
-The Thai government
has announced
that tackling the drug
problem is a top priority,
but caught between the biggest
meth producer in the world
and its biggest consumer,
Thailand is struggling to cope
with the international
crime syndicates
using the country as
a meth superhighway.
The authorities have taken
a hard line on narcotics.
Nevertheless, like most wars
on drugs around the world,
it's failing to succeed.
Throughout the
making of this film,
one thing has become
increasingly apparent,
and that is that the drugs
industry in Southeast Asia
has and is changing
dramatically,
from the types of
drugs being sold
to the methods that the
gangs use to operate.
Unfortunately, I'm not seeing
the authorities change with it.
And just knowing that,
in the last 10, 20 years,
drug production has
gone from the tens of tons
up to the hundreds of
tons is absolutely terrifying.
In another 10 years will
it be thousands of tons?
The next generation
is gonna have
a huge drug
problem to deal with,
and if we don't
change and adapt now,
we're gonna lose that fight.