Southeast Asia’s most notorious narcotics trafficker has become one of the most powerful figures in the country’s corrupt, abusive jade business, this report shows.
Myanmar’s jade business may be the biggest natural resource heist in modern history. The sums of money involved are almost incomprehensibly high and the levels of accountability are at rock bottom. One of the most dominant and dangerous groups involved is a collection of companies controlled by Myanmar’s most famous drug lord, Wei Hsueh Kang.
Building on Global Witness’ explosive recent reporting, Lords of Jade shows how Wei Hsueh Kang controls a range of companies licensed to exploit the Hpakant jade mines in conflict-affected Kachin State.
Wei is the architect of a methamphetamine epidemic that has ripped through Southeast Asia, and is the subject of sanctions and a US$2million bounty from the US government.
This report shows how Wei Hsueh Kang and his associates, have used a web of opaque company structures to build, and disguise, a jade empire.
