5 legendary kingpins from Asia

Have you ever wondered how a movie about your life would be like? For Pablo Escobar, his life story is the gripping focus in The Infiltrator, which premiered in cinemas around the world last week.

In The Infiltrator, federal agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) goes undercover to penetrate the vicious trafficking network run by Escobar himself. Escobar’s life of crime has also been chronicled in Netflix series, Narcos, which tells the story of how this unassuming man rose from the ashes to become a powerful force in the Colombian drug cartel during the 70′s and 80′s.

Heralded as one of the world’s most notorious kingpins, this Colombian drug lord was responsible for an estimated 80 per cent of the cocaine supply into the United States at the peak of his reign.

While Escobar’s case fascinated a generation and rocked the world (and the criminal underworld), Asia is also home to a slew of infamous kingpins as well. Today, we take a look at five of Asia’s greatest and most cunning underworld kingpins of days past - some of whom could even put Escobar to shame.

1. Wong Keng Liang

Photo: Getty Images

In 1998, a thin, bespectacled Malaysian man was ambushed and arrested upon arrival at the Mexico City International Airport. This man was none other than Anson Wong Keng Liang, otherwise known as the Lizard King, and even more widely recognised as the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”.

Wong was lured to Mexico as part of an elaborate investigation, aptly labelled ‘Operation Chameleon’ - which sought to capture one of the world’s most active and leading smugglers of wild animals.

But Wong wasn’t just a mere reptile smuggler. Wong operated his illegal trafficking ring under the facade of private zoos and businesses, and traded some of the world’s most elusive and rare creatures.

These included endangered Komodo dragons, Spix’s macaws, and even animals thought to be extinct, such as the Gray’s monitor. Wong was sentenced to 71 months in prison by the US government in 2001.

After his release, he returned to Malaysia, but was arrested again in 2010 while on transit to Jakarta when a lock on his suitcase broke, revealing a writhing mess of boa constrictors, vipers, and a South American turtle inside.

Wong was again sentenced to five years in jail, but was released a mere 17 months later in 2012.

2. Dawood Ibrahim

Photo: BBC

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was born on 26 Dec 1955. His father, then a head constable at the Crime Investigation Department (CID), would have never expected that his son, only mere decades later, would transform into one of the deadliest kingpins in Indian history.

This kingpin was better known as ‘Bhai’, which literally means brother in Hindi, and also translated to ‘Don’ in the lingo of the Mumbai underworld. Ibrahim is notoriously reputed as the leader of a ruthless organised crime syndicate, D-Company, and with a net worth of over US$6 billion, is believed to control much of the hawala system in India - which is the unofficial system for money brokerage, money transfers, and remittance.

Apart from a very profitable drug business, this kingpin is also involved with arms trafficking, and even terrorism - Ibrahim is suspected to be one of the masterminds behind the tragic 1993 and 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.

The United States Department of Treasury also believes that Ibrahim had ties with Osama bin Laden, and declared Ibrahim as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2003.

He is also on Interpol’s most wanted list. While there are claims that he is hiding out in Pakistan, the exact whereabouts of this kingpin are still unknown.

3. Khun Sa

Photo: Wikipedia

Heroin and opium use was globally rampant in the latter part of the 20th century. From the 1970s to the 1990s, 75 percent of world’s opium trade originated from Southeast Asia’s very own “Golden Triangle,” which was an overlapping area across Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand.

Within New York alone, 80 percent of the heroin on the streets came from the Golden Triangle during those few decades. This was the work of the “King of the Golden Triangle”, a General Khun Sa, who controlled more than half of the drug trade in the region.

He was a brutal kingpin, who even had control of private armies - the Shan United Army and the Mong Tai Army - and who singlehandedly built a global drug empire. Despite the negative public perception of him as a criminal, Khun Sa saw things in a different light - that, despite the means, the drug trade was actually enabling the poor in Burma to feed their families.

In 1977, he made an open challenge to the American government (who was on his tail) to buy his opium crop so that he could have the money for his people.

Unlike the other kingpins on the list, Khun Sa made a peaceful surrender in 1996, and thereafter went into deep hiding until his death in 2007. Not much is known about the later years of his life after he disappeared from the underworld, and from the public eye.

4. Freddy Budiman

Photo: Merdeka.com

The next kingpin on the list belongs to today’s modern era. In May 2013, officials from Indonesia’s National Drug Agency raided a truck in Cengkareng, West Jakarta.

Inside the truck, they uncovered a literal truckload of ecstasy - a whopping 1.4 million pills, to be exact. These all belonged to drug kingpin, Freddy Budiman, and heinous leader of an international drug syndicate.

He had ordered the pills from China, and somehow had the drugs smuggled through security checks successfully. Even after he was arrested, thrown into prison, and given a death sentence, he still continued to surprise and defy authorities at every turn.

His drug trade business never stopped flourishing even while he was doing time - because he was conducting it from within prison! Budiman consumed and sold drugs within the facility, possessed a dozen contraband cell phones, and even had the liberty of having frequent intimate encounters with his girlfriend - all while in prison.

Right before his execution, he sent out a public confession which detailed how corrupt officials were deeply involved in his illegal activities for many years; this confession shone a heavy spotlight on Indonesia’s corruption standards and arguably flawed legal system.

For his crimes, Budiman was executed via firing squad on July 29, 2016.

5. Wong Chi-ping

Photo: AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo

In January 2015, officials from Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency carried out one of the biggest drug busts the country has ever seen - and finally nabbed Wong Chi-ping, a Hong Kong drug kingpin who had been hunted by authorities for years.

Wong was the boss of a global drug ring, wanted in seven jurisdictions across the region for his involvement in drug trafficking. And just what was so impressive about Wong?

His syndicate moved illegal drugs in tonnes. The 2015 bust had officials uncovering an incredible 860kg of high-grade methamphetamine (more commonly known as meth and nicknamed “shabu shabu” in Indonesia), stuffed into sacks of ‘coffee’.

In a humiliating turn of events, police forced Wong and his lackeys to burn the drugs (worth 1 trillion rupiah, or more than S$100 million) in an incinerator.

Wong was tried for illegal smuggling of synthetic drugs, and placed on death row.

About the author:

Cherylene Renee ponders about the deeper meanings and themes behind movies and television shows, and also spends an unhealthy amount of time on Netflix. In her free time, she also blogs on her travel and lifestyle site, Wandersugar.com. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.