Tse Chi Lop: 'Asia's El Chapo' extradited to Australia

Australian police released a picture of officers escorting Tse Chi Lop through Melbourne airport

Asia's most-wanted alleged drug kingpin has been extradited to Australia where he faces potential life imprisonment.

Tse Chi Lop is accused of heading up a multibillion-dollar drug operation spanning several countries in the Asia Pacific, from Japan to New Zealand.

A notorious figure whose status in Asia has long drawn comparisons to Mexican drug lord El Chapo, he was arrested at a Dutch airport last year by Interpol.

Following a near two-year battle, he was finally extradited on Thursday.

Australian police released pictures of armed officers escorting him off the plane at Melbourne airport in handcuffs. He is due to face a local court on Thursday.

The 59-year-old is alleged to be the head of one of the world's biggest multibillion-dollar drug syndicates.

The Company, also known as the Sam Gor Syndicate, dominates the illegal drugs market across Asia. Australian police estimate it's responsible for up to 70% of the drugs coming into Australia alone.

They said the group smuggled huge quantities of drugs - particularly methamphetamine, but also heroin and ketamine - into the country in packs of tea.

Australia's charges against Mr Tse relate to alleged operations from 2012 to 2013, where a A$4.4m (£2.45m; $2.98m) load of methamphetamine was trafficked into the country.

The police crackdown at the time found the proceeds of the drug trade in a home in Melbourne included more than A$4m in cash, 99 designer handbags and a yellow Lamborghini.

The Lamborghini was towed by federal authorities

Tse Chi Lop is suspected of heading up a multi-billion dollar meth operation

The scale of his alleged enterprises is why Mr Tse has been compared to the Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Australian police had been hunting him for more than a decade. They say most of his drugs flowed into Sydney and Melbourne.

Mr Tse was detained at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in January 2021 while trying to board a plane.

Mr Tse has denied the drug charges. He has claimed that his arrest was set up by Australian authorities, and argued that Australian police had illegally arranged for his expulsion from Taiwan to Canada to include a stop in the Netherlands so that he could be arrested there.

The effort to arrest Mr Tse, Operation Kungur, involved about 20 agencies across continents with Australian police taking the lead. He was rumoured to have been living in Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan in recent years.

He previously spent nine years in prison after being arrested on drug trafficking charges in the US in the 1990s.

Australian police said another man, a British-Chinese national, would also stand trial alongside Mr Tse as a co-accused. The 66-year-old man was extradited from Thailand in June.

Millions of dollars were found stuffed in a bag in the house

Ziploc bags filled with heroin and methamphetamine were concealed in this petrol tank