Asian crime lords target Golden Triangle as they devise new markets

Bangkok — Crime empires embedded in Asia’s “Golden Triangle” border areas are getting richer and more powerful, blurring the lines between the illicit economy and the legitimate one as they diversify from drugs to wildlife trafficking, cyber scams and money laundering, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The Golden Triangle, which cuts across the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, is home to an array of transnational crime organizations that run multibillion-dollar enterprises with virtual impunity — and they are embracing new technology to make more profit.

Myanmar, which borders five countries, has long been the epicenter of many illegal Asia-Pacific trades. It has sunk into chaos since a 2021 coup, allowing crime groups to flourish in the lack of governance, especially in remote Shan State, which borders Thailand to the south and China to its east.

“Some of the challenges in Myanmar are really at the heart of the criminality we are seeing in and around the Golden Triangle,” said Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC deputy regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

“At the same time, Myanmar’s border areas are now much more connected to the rest of the region, and the spillover into Southeast Asia is growing,” he told VOA.

Fortunes carved out on unfettered methamphetamine production are now being multiplied with cyber scam parks and illicit wildlife trafficking — including bear bile and elephant ivory into southern China — and then laundered through casinos, the U.N. agency said in its annual World Drug Report earlier this week.

In the absence of serious law enforcement threats to their empires, the criminal networks working alongside armed groups in the Golden Triangle are getting bigger and more sophisticated in the ways they wash their money. They have been using an “underground banking infrastructure” of casinos, crypto and traditional currency exchanges to clean billions of dollars, Hofmann said.

“The line between the formal economy and criminal business is increasingly blurred, and corruption weakens governance systems in the region,” he said.

Increased Golden Triangle meth production is pushing drugs into new markets, as the price of yaba — addictive caffeine-laced meth pills taken across the Mekong River — crumbles to as low as $1 to $2 per pill, or less than a can of coke.

But cheaper meth has not come with “fluctuations in purity,” the study stated, driving up addiction rates in a region with limited resources and patchy political will for drug treatment and rehabilitation.

“There is a stronger focus now on a more balanced approach to drug control, taking into account both supply and demand of illicit drugs,” Hofmann said.

“But as drugs are getting cheaper and more accessible, including for very poor and young people, it is clear much more needs to be done in resourcing prevention and treatment systems that take care of those amongst the most vulnerable parts of society,” he said.

Myanmar’s conflict and chaos have exacerbated poverty in the border areas, in turn driving a surge in opium poppy production by poor rural communities.

Just this week, Myanmar’s Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Yar Pyae said in a statement: "In 2023, Myanmar saw a slight increase in illegal opium poppy cultivation. Therefore, the persuasion by the Myanmar Tatmadaw, Myanmar Police Force, and various departments to local ethnic communities in drug prevention efforts through educational activities has led to the destruction of a total of 6,181 acres of poppy fields during the 2023-2024 opium poppy cultivation season. The alternative development management sector is continuously carrying out the implementation of opium alternative development activities, the crop substitution sector, and the livestock breeding sector."

Yet, Myanmar is now the world’s number one opium producer, as the Taliban cracks down on poppy cultivation — the base ingredient of heroin — in Afghanistan, the study said.

The report also warned of mounting environmental damage caused by the rampant meth trade. While there are no studies in hard-to-reach areas, the UNODC said as a rule, every kilogram of methamphetamine produced creates 5 to 10 kilograms of toxic chemical waste.

Thailand alone burned upwards of 340 tons of seized narcotics in December and a further 20 tons on June 26, world drug day.

The kingdom has launched a renewed drug crackdown, but methamphetamine, ketamine and heroin continue to pour through its borders and ports to the rest of Southeast Asia.

“The drug producers are still operating along the borders, pumping out hundreds of thousands of pills a day,” Krisanaphong Poothakool, a prominent criminologist and former senior Thai police officer, told VOA.

The latest seizures with new packets of branding point to new players entering the meth trade, as traffickers get increasingly skillful in the way they move their drugs.

“Producers in Thailand are also making the pills on the go in moving vehicles. It’s nearly impossible to intercept them all,” he said.

Insulated from crackdowns by remote Golden Triangle locations, alliances with powerful armed groups and easily corrupted officials, the crime organizations of Southeast Asia show no sign of slowing down.

Security experts warn that cyber scams with bases in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia have made new fortunes for the crime lords and are becoming increasingly advanced with artificial intelligence and the reach of the internet.

"We are only at the beginning of a technology-driven revolution of the criminal ecosystem here, with implications for people far beyond this region," Hofmann said.