Welcome to the first Asian Crime Century briefing of 2023. This is an eclectic mix of stories of crime across a huge and diverse region, but there are several conclusions to be drawn from reports from the past year as we start 2023.
Myanmar is a hub for crime in multiple areas, due to the continued civil war against the military government, which itself is considered by many to be criminal. The ‘Spring Revolution’ in Myanmar involves a broad cross section of society fighting against the military rulers. The Karen National Liberation Army (the armed wing of the Karen National Union) continues to fight against the Myanmar military in the border area with Thailand. And in the north west of Myanmar the hundreds of thousands of displaced Rohingyas are desperately scratching out an existence that involves crime for some in the borders with Bangladesh and India. Crime prospers in failing states.
Corruption in China remains endemic. There is no reason to doubt this as the long running anti-corruption campaign illustrates how many cases of corruption there are at the lowest as well as the most senior levels of business and government. It does not seem to be apparent to the Chinese leadership that several decades of stringent action against corruption have not resulted in a lessening of the problem.
Transnational crime remains a major threat across Asia as organised crime groups from various countries seek opportunities in other countries using cyber-crime, particularly online fraud. There is a physical side to this as thousands of people have been illegally detained after moving overseas to seek employment opportunities, showing that cyber-crime has a real world side to it. Read the rest of the first briefing of 2023 to find out more about the Asia Crime Century.
Bangladesh
Six ‘Rohingya robbers’ detained in Cox’s Bazar by Bangladesh Customs officers reportedly had 14 firearms, 486 rounds of bullets and 20,000 ‘yaba’ pills. ‘Yaba’, called “crazy medicine” in Thai, is a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine produced largely in South East Asia. The authorities stated that the arrested Rohingya are residents of camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf who had been conducting robberies in the estuary of the Naf river (south of Cox’s Bazar) and Bay of Bengal. The area is in the middle of the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The dispersed nature of the Rohingya people in the region was shown by the arrest of 89 of the ethnic group amongst 501 people detained in 2022 by the Indian Border Security Force on India-Bangladesh border. The Border Security Force reported seizing a diverse array of contraband, including cash, cattle, weapons, ammunition, and illegal drugs such as Phensedyl (used as a cough medicine), marijuana, and Yaba tablets.
National border authorities may take continual action against wandering Rohingyas between Myanmar, India and Bangladesh, but after the massacre of thousands in Myanmar in 2017 the estimated 740,000 who fled to Bangladesh seem to have little to sustain them and an increasing level of crime in the region is likely to continue. Low level coastal piracy is also likely to develop.
China
Efforts to combat endemic corruption in China continue, with the authorities reporting the investigation of a total of 32 officials at a level of seniority reporting into the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee in 2022. Anti-corruption efforts are both domestic and international, with 840 fugitives returned to China in the first 11 months of 2022, including 21 who were the subject of INTERPOL Red Notices, and around 6.55 billion yuan (US$951 million) of illicit funds recovered.
The politicisation of the anti-corruption campaign is illustrated by the case involving a former official linked to Bo Xilai, the former party head in Chongqing who was imprisoned for life in 2013 and is suspected of coordinating a faction seen as a challenge to President Xi Jinping. The recently convicted official, Xu Ming, former deputy head of the State Administration of Grain, has pleaded guilty of taking more than 52.4 million yuan (US$7.6 million) in bribes.
Corruption is not likely to be reduced from its endemic state in China, despite the prolonged and continued anti-corruption campaign. Due to deeply entrenched corruption across the government, as well as the variable spread of economic benefits, this issue will remain a severe challenge for the Chinese Communist Party as the Xi Jinping era enters its second decade.
India
The underbelly of crime in India was apparent as police reported details of ‘koyta’ gangs in Pune and its outskirts who have terrorised people using sharp machetes. The gangs reportedly brandish machetes, robbing women of their jewellery, damaging vehicles, entering shops and refusing to pay bills. Their behaviour is part of efforts to establish dominance in this area through terror. This is low level crime that requires quick police action, such as the arrests in January which (in the video linked) illustrated the nature of these youth gangs.
The problem of low level crime, particularly against women, continues to be a cause for concern in India. The National Crime Records Bureau stated that nearly 430,000 cases of crime against women were reported in 2021, over 40 percent more than a decade earlier and likely to be less than the actual number due to under-reporting of violence against women. Horrific gang rapes have been reported in the past decade including in 2018 the abduction, rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl by seven men (including a priest and a police officer) in Jammu and Kashmir; in 2020, the rape of a 19-year-old lower caste Dalit woman (who died later with injuries to her spinal cord) in Uttar Pradesh by four upper-caste men; and in 2012 the infamous rape and murder of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh by the driver of a bus she was traveling on and his five accomplices, who tortured her with an iron rod and threw her naked from the bus to die.
This increasing level of violence against women and the utter evil nature of some of the attacks indicates that there is a societal problem that is not being adequately addressed. India is an increasingly successful country with over 1.4 billion people, forecast to be the largest national population in the world soon (overtaking China) and is the fifth largest economy in the world, but the continued violence against women must be addressed for the country to better demonstrate its moral leadership.
Japan
The Fukuoka District Court ordered that the office of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang in Fukutsu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, to be closed and gang members prohibited from entering or holding meetings. This is the first time that a local government in Japan has filed a provisional injunction banning the use of a crime syndicate office. In 2017 the headquarters office of Aizukotetsu-kai, a designated organized crime group in Kyoto, was banned from using their office, and in 2020 the office of a Yamaguchi-gumi affiliated group in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, was subject to a similar order.
The National Police Agency reported at the end of 2021 that yakuza membership numbered 24,100, a decrease of 1,800 year on year, and the lowest number since statistics began in 1958. The Yamaguchi-gumi is the largest gang with 8,500 members, which represents 35.3% of all yakuza in Japan. The Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi had 6,100 members when it was founded in 2015, but only just over 1,000 by the end of 2021. The other major gangs are the Kizuna-kai, the Ikeda-gumi, the Sumiyoshi-kai, and the Inagawa-kai, with membership of 17,200, or 71.4% of Japan’s total yakuza population.
Yakuza criminal activity has not stopped and it has never been confined to Japan. In December 2022, the Thai police reported that they are investigating possible yakuza criminal operations after charging five Japanese nationals with operating a call centre scam in Bangkok. The men have been charged with imprisonment, international criminal activity, human trafficking, threats, racketeering, and confiscating a person’s documents. The gang was discovered after a Japanese man escaped from the residence where he was being detained and alert the Japanese embassy. The victim had travelled to Thailand in early December after being offered a job by the gang, who the Thai police suspect of being Yakuza due to their distinctive tattoos.
North Korea
According to cyberthreats experts at Kaspersky, North Korean hackers are posing as venture capital firms to steal cryptocurrencies, with the ‘Lazarus Group’ creating fake Internet domains purporting to be well known Japanese, US, and Vietnamese companies. The South Korean National Intelligence Service reported in December 2022 that North Korean hackers have stolen an estimated 1.5 trillion won (US$1.2 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it in 2022. This major criminal enterprise is a source of foreign currency for North Korea, which illustrates that it should be considered as a ‘mafia state’.
Malaysia
The problem of corruption in Malaysia was apparent from the arrest of the CEO of a private company accused of involvement in the misappropriation of RM92.5 billion (US$21 billion) in economic stimulus and recovery package funds. The arrest was made by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, investigating corruption relating to government projects under the Economic Stimulus Package to selected contractors between 2020 and 2022. The CEO is suspected to have accepted bribes and kickbacks from contractors to help them network with government officials. The political connections to corruption in Malaysia are apparent as the CEO is reported to be a close associate of former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and a divisional leader of the ‘Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’ (Malaysian United Indigenous Party) which limits full membership to Malay ‘bumiputras’ and is a major component of the governing coalition.
Singapore
A 19-year-old man pleaded guilty in court to assisting another person in phishing scams affecting OCBC bank between December 2021 and January 2022. The accused changed the login details of customer bank accounts, transferred small amounts of money between accounts as a test, assisting in frauds that affected 800 customers who lost SG$12.8 million (US$9.5 million). The group had sent text messages claiming to be from OCBB to customers asking them to click on links to fake OCBB websites, where they logged in providing their bank login credentials, enabling the gang to transfer funds out of their accounts.
Vietnam
The National Assembly has voted to dismiss two deputy prime ministers after a request from Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. The alleged corruption of one of the deputy PMs is related to police investigations into Viet A Technology JSC, a maker of Covid-19 test kits, which involves criminal proceedings against 102 persons connected to the company. The case involving the second deputy PM involves allegations of bribery connected to the organisation of repatriation flights for Vietnamese abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to criminal proceedings against 39 individuals. The dismissals are believed to be part of continuing government efforts to reduce corruption, seen as essential to protect the legitimacy of the Communist Party in the country. This is worth bearing in mind as Vietnam has a large population (100 million) and is becoming a more attractive destination for outsourcing following concerns regarding supply chain concentration in China in the past several years.