Australia sentences “Asian El Chapo” to 16 years over drug-trafficking plot PHOTO

An Australian court has sentenced the former leader of a multibillion-dollar drug syndicate, widely known as the “Asian El Chapo,” to 16 years in prison over a drug-trafficking conspiracy.

Australian police announced the verdict following the completion of a 14-year investigation into the suspect, Caliber.Az reports, citing The Straits Times.

Court records show that 62-year-old Tse Chi Lop, a Canadian national, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to traffic commercial quantities of drugs into Australia between 2012 and 2013.

“This investigation highlights that the long arm of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) can reach criminals across the world,” AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.

Tse was the former head of a sprawling transnational syndicate known to police as the “Sam Gor syndicate,” named after his nickname “Sam Gor,” which in Cantonese means “Brother Number Three.”

The Victoria County Court in Melbourne sentenced Tse to 16 years in prison, and he will be eligible to apply for parole after 10 years.

The scale of his operations drew comparisons to Latin America’s most notorious drug traffickers, including El Chapo and Pablo Escobar.

According to police, at its peak, his syndicate was the largest supplier of methamphetamine in Australia.

UN estimates indicate that trafficking methamphetamine from Japan and other parts of Northeast Asia to New Zealand and the South Pacific generates annual revenues of $17.7 billion.

Dutch police arrested Tse at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2021, after which he was extradited to Australia.

By Jeyhun Aghazada