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World

Arrest in Thailand of second drug kingpin tightens dragnet on huge syndicate

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By Tom Allard, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-um

BANGKOK (Reuters) – A second senior leader of a vast drug syndicate has been arrested, a Thai narcotics official said, as a transnational dragnet tightens on the Sam Gor group, which police say dominates the $70 billion annual Asia-Pacific drug trade.

The October arrest of Hong Kong citizen Lee Chung Chak in Bangkok preceded last month’s high-profile arrest in the Netherlands of Tse Chi Lop, a China-born Canadian national who police suspect is the top leader of the syndicate, also called “The Company”.

Lee, 65, is a former prison mate of Tse’s suspected of being involved in drug trafficking for four decades. A 2018 Australian Federal Police (AFP) document reviewed by Reuters outlining the top 19 targets in the syndicate described Lee as a “senior project manager responsible for big ventures of border controlled drugs”.

The two arrests on different continents within three months stem from a decade-long investigation by the AFP, which also leads the multinational Operation Kungur task force targeting the syndicate.

It is rare for suspected senior drug traffickers to be arrested and successfully prosecuted in the Asia-Pacific region.

“The suspect was arrested by Thai Narcotics police on Oct. 1 based on an arrest warrant issued by a Thai court, which followed an extradition request by the Australian authorities,” Lieutenant General Montri Yimyaem, head of Thailand’s Narcotics Suppression Bureau, told Reuters when asked about Lee.

“The extradition is currently being processed by the court.”

In recent years, Lee has emerged as a rival to the Canadian as a major player in the region’s drug trade, according to two investigators, who spoke to Reuters on condition they not be identified.

“We understand his star had risen to be an equal or even a bigger player,” said one of the investigators. “He’s a very significant arrest in his own right.”.

Thai authorities seized a laptop and multiple phones when they searched Lee’s serviced apartment in an upscale Bangkok area, a potential treasure trove of intelligence, the two investigators told Reuters. A third official added that a document and cash in several denominations were also seized.

Lee is appealing the November approval by Thailand’s Criminal Court of Australia’s extradition request, said a source at Thailand’s Ministry of Justice. Tse is in prison in the Netherlands, where a court has yet to rule on his extradition to Australia.

Lee could not be contacted in prison, nor could his lawyer be identified by Reuters. A lawyer for Tse declined to comment. An AFP media officer declined to comment.

The alleged role of Tse – whose nickname is Sam Gor, or “Brother Number Three” in Cantonese – as leader of the syndicate and the investigation into his activities was revealed by Reuters in 2019.

(A link to the Reuters Special Report: https://reut.rs/3oOjiIc)

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has estimated the syndicate made up to $17 billion from methamphetamine trafficking in the Asia-Pacific region alone in 2018. The UNODC representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, compared Tse to the notorious Latin American cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Police also suspect the crime group traffics heroin, ketamine, cocaine and MDMA, known as ecstasy, multiple officials across the region have told Reuters.

DRUG VETERAN

Tse and Lee were the subject of requests by the AFP for law enforcement authorities around the world to arrest them. They are expected to be charged in connection with importing illicit drugs a decade ago, the investigators say.

The two men supplied drugs to a Melbourne-based drug ring and were recorded on intercepts directing the leader of the ring, Suky Lieu, the investigators alleged.

A judge’s verdict rejecting Lieu’s attempt to have his prison sentence reduced said that Lieu owned a small Asian grocery store and was regularly in touch with his Hong Kong-based drug suppliers, using as many as 60 phones and SIM cards and speaking in code. The verdict said Lieu was the leader of the drug ring. Tse and Lee were not named in the verdict.

The two investigators told Reuters that Lee was arrested in Sydney in the 1980s, allegedly for being a manager of heroin couriers. He never went to trial because a key witness died, they said. Reuters could not independently confirm this.

Lee was sentenced to 140 months in prison in 1998 for playing a “supervisory role” in a conspiracy to import heroin into the United States, federal court filings there show. Lee – extradited from Thailand to face the charge – spent time in the Elkton penitentiary in Ohio while Tse was imprisoned there.

Tse was sentenced to nine years in prison for a separate conspiracy to import heroin into the United States. The two were released from Elkton within a month of each other after completing their sentences, U.S. Bureau of Prisons records show.

Police suspect Lee later played a key role for the syndicate overseeing drug lab operators in Shan State in northern Myanmar and regularly travelled there, the two investigators said. Shan State, which is largely controlled by ethnic armed groups, has been the epicentre of drug manufacturing in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle for decades.

(Reporting by Tom Allard, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-um in Bangkok; Additional reporting by Stephanie van den Berg in The Hague; Editing by William Mallard)

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Health

Plant-based antiviral drug may work against COVID-19: study

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A plant-derived antiviral medication may be “highly effective” in treating the coronavirus — and could also help fight future pandemics, according to new research in the UK.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham found that the broad spectrum antiviral thapsigargin is not only very effective against COVID-19, but also against a common cold coronavirus called respiratory syncytial virus and the influenza A, Eurekalert.org reported.

“Whilst we are still at the early stages of research into this antiviral and its impact on how viruses such as COVID-19 can be treated, these findings are hugely significant,” said Professor Kin-Chow Chang, who led the study along with colleagues at the Animal and Plant Health Agency, China Agricultural University and the Pirbright Institute.

“The current pandemic highlights the need for effective antivirals to treat active infections, as well as vaccines, to prevent the infection,” he said.

“Given that future pandemics are likely to be of animal origin, where animal to human and reverse zoonotic (human to animal) spread take place, a new generation of antivirals, such as thapsigargin, could play a key role in the control and treatment of important viral infections in both humans and animals,” Chang added.

The scientists found that the antiviral, at small doses, triggers a “highly effective” immune response against the three major types of human respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

Thapsigargin, which has been tested in prostate cancer, is effective against viral infection when used before or during active infection, according to the study.

It is able to prevent a virus from making new copies of itself in cells for at least 48 hours after a single 30-minute exposure, according to the study.

“Although more testing is clearly needed, current findings strongly indicate that thapsigargin and its derivatives are promising antiviral treatments against COVID-19 and influenza virus, and have the potential to defend us against the next Disease X pandemic,” Chang said.

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Health

Horse tranquilizer emerges as new and deadly street drug in US

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A horse tranquilizer is increasingly popping up as a street drug in the U.S., and it is now involved in nearly one-third of fatal opioid drug overdoses in Philadelphia, according to a new study.

The tranquilizer drug, called xylazine, is not considered an opioid, but it is often found mixed with the opioids heroin or fentanyl, a combination sometimes referred to as “tranq dope,” according to the study published Tuesday (Feb. 2) in the journal Injury Prevention.

The researchers found that detection of the drug during post-mortem exams has spiked sharply over the past decade among people who have died from opioid overdoses in Philadelphia.

The findings suggest that “the opioid epidemic throughout the USA continues to evolve,” the authors wrote. They say that overdose deaths involving xylazine may be underreported in the country because labs don’t always test for it. The authors call for increased monitoring of xylazine abuse in the U.S., as well as its health consequences.

Related: 10 interesting facts about heroin

Animal tranquilizer 

Xylazine is a sedative used in veterinary medicine, particularly in horses. In the U.S., it is not approved for use in humans and is known to cause potentially dangerous side effects in people, including low blood pressure and a slowed heart rate.

Illicit drug users in Puerto Rico have been taking xylazine with opioids since the early 2000s, and more recently, it has appeared in the illegal drug supply in the continental U.S. Health departments in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan have all reported several cases of overdose deaths involving xylazine over the past two years. But overall, research on xylazine in the U.S. illegal drug supply is very limited.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed data on overdose deaths in Philadelphia from 2010 to 2019. Specifically, they examined unintentional deaths involving heroin or fentanyl, which are both types of opioids.

They found that, between 2010 and 2015, xylazine was detected in just 2% of these overdose deaths. But by 2019, that figure had jumped to 31%.

What’s more, data on illegal drug seizures from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration suggest that xylazine is increasingly appearing in “polydrug” samples, which contain heroin or fentanyl along with other drugs. Between 2010 and 2013, none of the polydrug samples that were tested in the agency’s labs contained xylazine, but by 2019, 25% contained the drug.

Studies on the health effects of xylazine combined with opioids are limited, but some research suggests that the mixture may increase the risk of opioid overdose death.

Still, the researchers note that their study could not determine which drug or combination of drugs was involved in the Philadelphia overdose deaths.

It’s also unclear exactly why xylazine is being added to the U.S. drug supply and whether the people who overdosed knowingly took the drug. Some focus groups in Philadelphia have found that people who use illegal drugs report that xylazine makes the effects of opioids last longer, the authors said.

The authors concluded that “further study is needed to understand the synergistic effects of

fentanyl and xylazine use by humans and to better contextualize the reasons for its use in the USA.” And whenever possible, health jurisdictions should consistently test for the drug, they said.

Originally published on Live Science.  

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Business

Novavax says drug is more than 89% effective

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Biotech firm Novavax said Thursday that its coronavirus vaccine was more than 89% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in its phase three clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom.

The results were based on 62 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 15,000 participants. The company said 56 cases were observed in the placebo group versus six cases observed in the group that received its vaccine. That resulted in an estimated vaccine efficacy of 89.3%, it said.

Shares of the company were up more than 23% in after-hours trading.

With the results, the company “has the potential to play an important role in solving this global public health crisis,” Novavax CEO Stanley Erck said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with our partners, collaborators, investigators and regulators around the world to make the vaccine available as quickly as possible.”

The study also found that the vaccine appeared to be 85.6% effective against the U.K. variant, also known as B.1.1.7. A separate phase two study in South Africa showed that the vaccine isn’t nearly as effective against a new strain ravaging that country.

The shot was still considered effective in protecting against the virus, but at an efficacy rate of just 49.4% among 44 Covid-19 cases in South Africa, where 90% of the cases contain the troubling new variant, the company said.

As a result of the lower effectiveness against the strain in South Africa, Novavax said it plans to pick a modified version of the vaccine to better guard against the new strain “in the coming days.” It plans to test the modified vaccine in the second quarter of this year.

Novavax is among several companies developing a vaccine to fight the virus, which has infected more than 101 million people worldwide and killed at least 2.2 million as of Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Only two vaccines — from Pfizer and Moderna — have been authorized for use in the U.S. so far.

In July, the U.S. government, as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, announced it would pay Novavax $1.6 billion to develop and manufacture the potential vaccine, with the aim of delivering 100 million doses by the beginning of 2021.

It’s unclear if the data Thursday will be enough for Novavax to be given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration that would allow the distribution in the U.S. The company began a late-stage trial with 30,000 people in the U.S. and Mexico in late December.

Novavax’s vaccine contains synthesized pieces of the surface protein the coronavirus uses to infect humans. The company said the vaccine was well tolerated, adding that “severe, serious, and medically attended adverse events occurred at low levels and were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups.”

In August, the company said phase one trial data found its vaccine generated a promising immune response. Participants received two doses of the potential vaccine via intramuscular injection approximately 21 days apart. Novavax also said the vaccine was well tolerated with no serious adverse events reported.

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Health

New drug may be potent against the coronavirus

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The chemical compound plitidepsin (trademarked name Aplidin) was first extracted from a sea organism known as Aplidium albicans, commonly known as sea squirts. Researchers recently published in Science the results of preclinical experiments involving using plitidepsin to treat human and mouse cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. They found evidence that suggests it’s possible this drug can be used as a therapy for COVID-19.

The drug has been used in the past and was approved in Australia as a treatment for a type of cancer called multiple myeloma. But because there are so many potential drug compounds that exist, researchers can screen them for other uses and in this case for the coronavirus.

“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created an immediate need for antiviral therapeutics that can be moved into the clinic urgently. This led us to screen clinically approved drugs with established safety profiles,” says Adolfo García-Sastre, who is professor of microbiology and director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, according to a press release. García-Sastre is one of the lead researchers of the Science paper.

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The researchers focused on how the virus uses human cells to survive and reproduce. “That research led us to a biologic pathway, the eukaryotic translation machinery, where inhibition of the pathway showed significant antiviral activity in cell culture,” says Nevan Krogan, director of UC San Francisco’s Quantitative Bioscience Institute and one of the study’s lead researchers.

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When they tested plitidepsin in their experiments, they found that it was effective in human and mouse cell lines. “Plitidepsin is an extremely potent inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2, but its most important strength is that it targets a host protein rather than a viral protein,” said Kris White, who is an assistant professor of microbiology at ISMMS and first author of the Science paper, in the press release. “This means that if plitidepsin is successful in the treatment of COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be unable to gain resistance against it through mutation, which is a major concern with the spread of the new U.K. and South African variants.”

Although the drug would have to go through more tests to see if it’s effective against all the variants, there is some promising evidence that it would still be a good treatment option. The group also tested the drug against the U.K. variant and found that it was effective, although that research has not been published yet and is available as a preprint.

The next steps would be for the drug to go through clinical trials to test if it is effective in treating people with an active SARS-CoV-2 infection. “We need some new weapons in the arsenal,” Krogan tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is by far the best thing we’ve seen.”

For up-to-date information about COVID-19, check the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. For updated global case counts, check this page maintained by Johns Hopkins University or the COVID Tracking Project.

You can follow Chia-Yi Hou on Twitter.

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World

Tse Chi Lop, one of the world’s biggest drug dealers, arrested in Amsterdam

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Canadian national Tse Chi Lop was detained at Amsterdam’s Schipol International Airport on Friday, according to Australian Federal Police (AFP), which has taken the lead in a sprawling international investigation. Before his arrest, Tse was one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives.

Authorities allege that Tse, 57, is the leader of the Sam Gor Syndicate, arguably the biggest drug-trafficking operation in Asia’s history. Experts say he is in the same league as notorious drug lords El Chapo and Pablo Escobar.

“The importance of Tse’s arrest can not be underestimated. It’s big and (has) been a long time coming,” said Jeremy Douglas, the Regional Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The organization is accused of running a synthetic drug manufacturing empire in large swathes of the under-policed jungles of Myanmar, a region marred by civil war and still under the control of various competing warlords and militias — conditions that make it easy to hide industrial-scale drug manufacturing operations from law enforcement.

From there, Sam Gor has allegedly been able to procure large amounts of precursor chemicals, the ingredients to make synthetic drugs, and then move them across the region to nearby markets in Bangkok, but also to farther-flung ones in Australia and Japan, law enforcement said.

Sam Gor allegedly had operatives working throughout the globe, with players in South Korea, England, Canada and the United States, according to a briefing on the syndicate shared with CNN by an official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The documents described Sam Gor as a “triad-like network” — a reference to ethnic Chinese gangs that operate in Asia and North America — but more mobile and dynamic. The group’s existence was revealed in 2016 after a Taiwanese drug trafficker was arrested in Yangon, Myanmar, the briefing showed.

Further police investigations revealed that the organization was, as of 2018, earning between $8 billion and $17.7 billion worth of illicit proceeds a year, according to the briefing. The organization uses poorly regulated casinos in Southeast Asia to launder a significant portion of those proceeds.

AFP said a warrant was issued for Tse’s arrest in 2019 in connection with an operation targeting Sam Gor.

“The syndicate targeted Australia over a number of years, importing and distributing large amounts of illicit narcotics, laundering the profits overseas and living off the wealth obtained from crime,” AFP said in a statement.

Tse allegedly ran his multibillion dollar operation from Hong Kong, Macao and southeast Asia. But his name — or existence — was not public knowledge until he was revealed by a Reuters investigation published in 2019.

Dutch police spokesman Thomas Aling said Tse is expected to be extradited after appearing before a judge. Authorities in the Netherlands were unable to provide details about the legal proceedings and it was not clear whether Tse had a lawyer.

This is not Tse’s first run-in with law enforcement. Tse pleaded guilty to felony narcotics charges in the United States in 2000 and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Details surrounding the case are limited because it is still sealed, but the source said he was released in 2006 and returned to Canada before moving to Hong Kong.

While Douglas of the UNODC praised Tse’s arrest, he said more needed to be done to ensure drug lords cannot take advantage of poor government oversight of the areas in Myanmar and Laos.

“While taking down syndicate leadership matters, the conditions they effectively used in the region to do business remain unaddressed, and the network remains in-place,” he said. “A lot of difficult information is about to come out.”

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