The Merchants of Death and Fraud
The Asian Crime Century briefing 62
The arrest and charging by US authorities of Takeshi Ebisawa, a Japanese national alleged to be a member of a Yakuza group, with conspiracy to sell uranium and weapons grade plutonium from Myanmar to buyers in other countries has highlighted organised crime groups involved in arms dealing. The return to prominence of the ‘Merchants of Death’ is partly a consequence of the current global instability and conflict, which history tells us leads to increased demand for weapons and greater business for criminal arms dealers who provide the illegal supply, as well as engage in some fraud when they can do so.
In the early 1990s, Western intelligence agencies were chasing arms dealers trying to sell ‘Red Mercury’ to anyone who would pay large amounts for it, usually rogue states and terrorist groups. The context of the perceived threat from Red Mercury was the volatile international political situation, and the consequent high demand for a wide range of arms and weapons. The USSR was dissolved in 1991, leading to markets being awash with former Soviet military weapons for sale. Civil wars in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, Tajikistan and Yugoslavia caused high demand for low cost weapons for the various groups involved. Major wars such as ‘Gulf War One’ (1991), Chechnya (1994-6, 1999-2009), the Eritrean-Ethiopian war (1998-2000), the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan (1999), and in Kosovo (1998-9) heightened the demand.
High profile terrorist attacks such as the World Trade Centre bombing by Al Qaeda affiliated Ramzi Youssef (1993), the Buenos Aires bomb attack killing 85 mostly Jewish people by Iran (1994), the Oklahoma City bomb attack by right wing extremists Timothy McVeigh (1995), the Manchester city bomb attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA)(1996), the Omagh bomb attack by PIRA killing 29 people, bomb attacks by Al Qaeda on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the plot by Al Qaeda to plant bombs at LA international airport during millennium celebrations (1999) all caused high anxiety amongst Western governments and their intelligence agencies about the risk of a terrorist group obtaining nuclear weapons.
The Hunt for Red Mercury
Red Mercury was believed to be one of the greatest threats if terrorist groups obtained it. Such was the alarm regarding Red Mercury that Sam Cohen, one of the original members of the Manhattan Project team and known as the “father of the neutron bomb”, said in 1995 that “Red Mercury is real and it is terrifying. I think it is part of a terrorist weapon that potentially spells the end of organised society”, which he claimed in the New Scientist magazine could be used to make a baseball-sized neutron bomb capable of killing everyone within about 600 metres of the explosion.
The New Scientist reported that Red Mercury, first produced in 1965 at the nuclear research centre at Dubna, near Moscow, is “a polymer with a gel-like consistency in which mercury and antimony have been bound together after irradiation for up to 20 days in a nuclear reactor.” The substance had allegedly been produced at a chemicals factory in Yekaterinburg and later at multiple military sites in Russia with production of about 60 kilograms of red mercury a year.
Because of comments such as this from Cohen and others, arms dealers in the 1990s were able to charge almost anything for the supply of Red Mercury as buyers did not really understand what it is was and assumed that it capable of causing huge destruction. That assumption was later discredited as Red Mercury became better known as a fiction, but cases of terrorists seeking supplies of Red Mercury have persisted. In 2014, Islamic State (or Daesh) had reportedly offered to pay “whatever was asked” for supplies of Red Mercury from an established arms supplier. The stories, or legends, regarding Red Mercury added to the desire to obtain the substance as it became so mysterious that many people seemed to want to believe that the substance could be used as a weapon. According to smugglers, real Red Mercury is attracted to gold but repelled by garlic (as are vampires?). Hot Red Mercury could allegedly be found in the needles of old sewing machines, notably the Singer brand, which could be detected by a cell phone whose service would be interrupted by proximity to red mercury. Singer sewing machines were sold for $50,000.
In the 1990s in Hong Kong, Special Branch conducted multiple investigations into the sale of Red Mercury as the city has been a long standing hub for brokering arms sales. Hong Kong was an important point for weapons sales not only because of its role for brokering deals, but also because the opening up of China during the 1980s caused a diversion of government funding from the military to the economy, resulting in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needing to raise money and becoming a major supplier of a huge diversity of low cost weapons (especially copies of Soviet designs such as the Type 56 assault rifle based on the AK47 and the Type 64 pistol based on the Makarov) and military equipment (such as uniforms, webbing, helmets, and cheap vehicles).
The use of Red Mercury as a fictional product for frauds continues, with a variety of advertisements on the Internet for suppliers. The ‘Hong Kong Red Mercury Co. Ltd’ claims an address at No. 49-51 Jervois Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, China (shown below), and advertises “Red Mercury Hg2Sb2O7 (Antimony Mercury Oxide)”
The supplier offers 10g, 50g, 100g, 500g, 1000g sealed supplies of ‘Liquid Red Mercury’ (shown below) that is also described as “Antimony Mercury Oxide”.
Another alleged supplier advertising online is the Shandong Qiquan Biotechnology Co., Ltd, reportedly located at 2988 Qingdao Road, Huaiyin District, Jinan, Shandong Province, China, which advertises that “The red mercury is a semi-liquid material cherry-red. The intensity of red mercury is very high 20.2 g/ cm3. This Hg2 Sb207 liquid is the Military Labs Material: Antimony mercury oxide Other name: Cherry Red liquid mercury”.
These are only two of the many online advertisements for Red Mercury that are likely to be a small part of the massive range of Internet based frauds. However, some of the websites advertising Red Mercury also offer chemicals such as BMK, which is the main precursor for the production of amphetamines and methamphetamines (highlighted in the Asian Crime Century briefing 60).
Would you like to buy some weapons grade Plutonium?
Whilst the surge of arms being supplied to the market in the 1990s seemed to be a product of the complex international political period, a similar situation has developed in the 2020s. There has been a war in Ukraine for over two years, leading to high demand for a variety of weapons for both the Russian and Ukrainian forces. Civil war continues in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban taking over the government. Low intensity conflict continues in Nagorno-Karabakh, periodically escalating into war. Islamic jihadists continue to conduct attacks in sub-Saharan Africa, with the region becoming a haven for ISIS affiliated groups. Various Islamist paramilitary groups operate across Iraq and Syria. Yemen has had civil war since 2014, and the ascendant Houthi forces have extended their operations into the Red Sea. And most critically, the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7th October led to a massive Israeli military response and the threat of wider conflict across the region. Demand for weapons is high, and business for illegal arms dealers is good.
It is hence not surprising that Takeshi Ebisawa has been busy trying to sell nuclear materials as well as other weapons to undercover US law enforcement agents. The US Justice Department announced on 21 February that Ebisawa had been charged with “conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials from Burma to other countries”. These are new charges that supersede charges laid against Ebisawa and co-defendant Somhop Singhasiri in 2022 relating to international narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses.
The charges result from an undercover operation conducted by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from 2020 during which Ebisawa told a DEA source that he had access to a large quantity of nuclear materials. Ebisawa provided the source with pictures of rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation, and claimed that his client (an ethnic insurgent group leader) had been mining uranium in territory that he controlled Myanmar. The DEA source told Ebisawa that he could help to broker the sale of the nuclear material to an Iranian General, but Ebisawa then claimed that in fact he could supply the General with “plutonium” that would be even “better” and more “powerful” than uranium.
The US authorities have claimed that a US nuclear forensic laboratory examined the Nuclear Samples and determined that both contain detectable quantities of uranium, thorium, and plutonium, the latter of which is weapons-grade and if produced in sufficient quantities and would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon. Fraudulent Red Mercury this is not, although the quantities of Plutonium available to Ebisawa are not known.
Major Japanese newspapers The Mainichi and Yomiuri have reported the case but only stated that Ebisawa is “said to be a Yakuza leader”. It is unusual for the Japanese news media to not have identified Ebisawa’s Yakuza background if he is in fact a member. The US Department of Justice indictment states that Ebisawa “is a leader of the Yakuza organised crime syndicate, a highly organized, transnational Japanese criminal network that operates around the world”. The largest Yakuza organisations are the Yamaguchi-gumi with 8,100 members and associates, the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi with 760, the Sumiyoshi-kai with 3,800, and the Inagawa-kai with 3,100, but they are business rivals and there is no homogenous “Yakuza organized crime syndicate” as the US authorities stated. It is more likely that the DEA have jumped to a conclusion regarding Ebisawa’s role and seniority as it is unlikely that any Yakuza organisation leader would be operating at this level.
Ebisawa does however seem to also be a traditional illegal arms dealer. In 2021, he sent a list of weapons that he sought to procure from the DEA undercover source, shown below, with numbers that indicate that his ultimate buyer would be equipping a brigade size military formation. The civil war in Myanmar has a number of eager buyers for 5,000 AK47s, 5,000 M16s, and 2 million rounds of ammunition, and as Ebisawa claimed that his client is the leader of an ethnic insurgent group it is likely that the weapons were destined for use in that conflict.
Takeshi Ebisawa and his associates are arms dealers supplying products to fuel any of the ongoing wars that require a continual supply of weapons. They may also be fraudsters, and although Ebisawa was not offering Red Mercury for sale to the undercover DEA he would have done if they had asked for it. Death and fraud are just business lines for illegal arms dealers.