The People Trafficker

The People Trafficker

Greg Clancy

Published by MoshPit Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright © Greg Clancy 2012

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Print edition first published 2012 by Sunda Publications

PO Box 353

Gordon NSW 2069

Print version printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

Cover design by Red Ape, St Leonards, NSW

Layout by MoshPit Publishing, Hazelbrook, NSW

http://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au/

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Disclaimer

The characters in this book are fictional. The organisations, other than those in the public domain, are fictional.

The portrayals of the events and human trafficking operational structures are based on fact.

References to political and commercial corruption linked to the international trafficking and smuggling of adults and children are based on fact.

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Acknowledgements

My thanks to Lionel Sugito, Ali Suprapto, Catherine Hammond, Serge Medina, and especially to Jenny Mosher for her invaluable suggestions and guidance through the final stages of the manuscript preparation. My family supported the project in various ways, including numerous script corrections.

Greg Clancy

August 2012

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Ming Enterprises Organisation Chart

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TitlePage

Disclaimer

Acknowledgements

Ming Enterprises Organisation Chart

Chapter 1 - Central Business District, Hong Kong

Chapter 2 - The Commercial Chartered Bank, Singapore

Chapter 3 - Merdeka Square, Jakarta, Indonesia

Chapter 4 - UK Border Agency Headquarters, London

Chapter 5 - The Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia

Chapter 6 - The Jayakarta Grill Restaurant, Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, Jakarta

Chapter 7 - The Commercial Chartered Bank, Singapore

Chapter 8 - Changi Airport, Singapore

Chapter 9 - The Camellia Hotel, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Chapter 10 - The Camellia Hotel Restaurant, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Chapter 11 - Slough Industrial Estate, Slough, England

Chapter 12 - South Kensington, London

Chapter 13 - South Kensington, London

Chapter 14 - Sukanegara, West Java, Indonesia

Chapter 15 - Office of Ming Enterprises Ltd, Hong Kong

Chapter 16 - Office of Ming Enterprises Ltd, Hong Kong

Chapter 17 - The Commercial Chartered Bank, Singapore

Chapter 18 - The Concorde Hotel, Singapore

Chapter 19 - St. Thomas’ Hospital, London

Chapter 20 - Metropolitan Police Headquarters, New Scotland Yard, London

Chapter 21 - Slough Industrial Estate, Slough, England

Chapter 22 - Metropolitan Police Headquarters, New Scotland Yard, London

Chapter 23 - UK Border Agency Headquarters, London

Chapter 24 - Metropolitan Police Headquarters, New Scotland Yard, London

Chapter 25 - The Prince Edward Hotel, Battersea, London

Chapter 26 - Sukanegara, Java, Indonesia

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Central Business District, Hong Kong

Standing silently beside an office window, Ming Jiao glared at the rain pounding in waves against the glass. The normally bright lights along Queens Road Central were dimmed and twisted, and he looked down at the street ten floors below, gazing at the people scuttling with umbrellas rendered useless by the high winds.

His eyes moved from the street to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building less than three minutes’ walk away. The heavy rain enveloped the tower, and in the darkness it presented an image of a monolithic, almost fearful, structure.

Ming glanced at his watch – 9.52 pm – and resumed his stance at the window. He had been troubled by the weather all day, and the unseasonal conditions instinctively connected with his superstitious nature. The unpredicted weather presented symbols of uncertainty, and this was before he had received the news which had brought him, his son Richard, and his operations manager and closest confidante, Chang Peng-Li, back to their office that evening.

A subdued voice followed a gentle knock on his door, ‘about seven minutes,’ as Richard walked in and switched on a television raised onto a small table. Ming remained silent and continued to stare at the rain for several seconds before lowering the blind and sitting in a visitor’s chair. He looked intently at the television screen which Richard was fine-tuning to overcome the distorted reception caused by the weather.

Ming’s interest in the office television was normally limited to live broadcasts from the Hong Kong Jockey Club. But tonight his viewing was triggered by the news of a far more serious gamble that his business had set in motion the previous month.

Chang entered the office, sat next to him and the two men stared at a travel advertisement.

Earlier in the evening, as Ming had relaxed at home, he had changed television channels to view the 8.00 pm news. His interest was obtaining an update on a Vietnamese government corruption scandal, but he was shocked by the lead story breaking out of London. The details of the news item were sketchy and lasted only twenty seconds – but long enough to create a wavering sensation of disbelief. He had remained seated, as if traumatised, for a full minute.

After searching unsuccessfully on other channels for further references to the London news item, Ming had called Richard and Chang to an office meeting in one hour. He had dressed and left home barely saying a word to his bewildered wife, who had witnessed over the last ten years of their marriage her husband’s daily routine becoming increasingly simplified and predictable. His exit from the house at that hour was anything but predictable.

His wife understood these changes to be a natural development in the ageing process, but she also believed that it comprised a major contradiction in Ming’s sense of being – the conflict between his apparent wealth, and how the income that created it, was produced. In this, what Ming and his wife understood were in parallel, but at the same time, strangely contradictory. She knew the business sources that supported their comfortable lifestyle, but failed to understand her husband’s apparent inability to retire like other businessmen. Her forthright life philosophy regarded their elevated social ranking as being the end result of hard work – the nature of the work was not important. He would agree, but inwardly he lived with the anxiety that one day the dubious foundations on which his business domain depended would collapse, or turn against him. Thirty years earlier that anxiety did not exist, but his financial success since then had been generated by a business activity enclosed from public view by a barrier of mystery and concealment. For this reason, at seventy-four years of age, complete retirement for him was not an option.

Ming had driven slowly to his office, ploughing through the layers of rain lashing his Mercedes and rendering the windscreen wipers temporarily ineffective. He had become increasingly annoyed in the dense traffic, and cursed the over-cautious drivers ahead who excessively hesitated at every intersection. Held up in a seemingly unending queue at traffic lights, his mood changed as he accepted the inevitability of the slow journey. He attempted to relax in his most effective way – by reflecting on the history of his business operations. This always prompted a reminder of his career moves and the difficulties of his early life.

His obsession with regularly reviewing his life’s experiences mirrored the insecurity he bore with his perceived community status. He presented as an example of the self-made businessman, rising from poverty to the heights of financial success. And he duly followed the Hong Kong custom of ensuring that to certify this success, his wealth was on display for all to see.

His reminiscences usually followed a pre-determined pattern. He would recall the difficulties his parents endured under the Japanese occupation in World War II, and their painful preoccupation with the daily search for food. He would then move to his teenage years and his involvement with gangs, stealing from department stores and pick-pocketing. He had considered, but disregarded, an opportunity to join a youth association, a front for triad recruitment. But now, in later life, he would proudly recall the belief he held in his own destiny, and his success would be determined by his own ability and not through the risks attached to the reliance on others.

Ming always held a special fondness of the madness of the so-called Cultural Revolution inflicted on the Chinese people by Mao Zedong. It was during this period in the 1960s that he applied his unsophisticated business principles to the increasing consumer demands for labour-intensive manufacturing. With refugees from China fearing a forced return to a very uncertain future, Ming, only in his mid-twenties, had recognised the opportunity for cheap labour becoming even cheaper.

He had commenced a small toy assembly business which did not require substantial start-up costs – just human effort. He all but totally ignored the government’s ineffective and poorly policed labour laws, and none of his staff ever complained. The word exploitation was never mentioned, and to a Western toy importer the only concerns were in the contracted price, quality and delivery.

The toy assembly business had produced for him a new status level with moderate wealth and a keen eye to the future. All businesses used labour to make profits, but he had refined this basic principle to ultimate personal advantage. Although not a competent manager, and lacking any formal education of note, he possessed the vital commercial quality of understanding his strengths and weaknesses – a crucial component in business expansion or change of direction.

He disbanded his toy assembling operations when large-scale competition witnessed the disappearance of his profits. Adopting the same exploitation principle, he formed a labour hire business utilising illegal immigrants from China, Vietnam and the Philippines. His hire rates were priced at the market but his workers received substantially less than the normal pay for comparative work. His profits from the venture elevated him into an expensive home and his first Mercedes.

Always conscious of the precarious nature of his high profit/high risk business activities, Ming knew that his income stream could collapse by the passing of a law, or cease without notice by the intrusion into his operations of a triad gang. He looked constantly for opportunities, and a new one emerged as the Vietnam War concluded in 1975.

Many Vietnamese, particularly ethnic Chinese, were desperate to leave the country. The only exit to the favoured West for most was by sea, and the only vessels available were fishing boats capable of limited ocean-going voyages. When the exodus commenced, and it was clear that departures were often unhindered courtesy of official corruption, he quickly recognised the profit potential. Facilitating the movement of Vietnamese to countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, could mean exceptionally high financial pickings. But he needed to act rapidly as such opportunities inevitably attracted the attention of powerful organised gangs with international associates.

Unknown to Ming, during his hasty research of the opportunities in Vietnam, were the complexities of foreign crime operations. The new venture was a far cry from his toy assembly and labour hire businesses which, though exploitative, provided a public profile of respectability. And, it was all on home soil – where he dictated the operations, and understood the limits of commercial crime, sleaze and corruption. The international people smuggling venture would expose far more difficulties than a tightly controlled home-grown business. How would he receive payment? How would he arrange lengthy sea voyages from Vietnam via his office in Hong Kong? Without understanding the legal and social dynamics, how would he plan and coordinate the selection and departure of people from a foreign country while avoiding the authorities? Would destination countries accept his clients as refugees and allow permanent residency? Without a satisfactory end result, he knew his opportunities would be severely limited. His answer to all the potential problems lay with a system of ‘agents’ which Chang implemented, controlled and guided.

The one business consideration he had not needed to address was the one that most commercial ventures would require to be answered first – can the customer pay? He knew that considerable quantities of gold were held by the ethnic Chinese community in Vietnam and the notion of receiving gold or cash as advance payments for his services had held a particular fascination for him.

To produce a successful plan he had needed to invest in two areas – operatives to arrange the vessels, passengers and payment collection, and foreign supply points to provide assistance along the way. From his planning, there surfaced the required operational modules. He had obtained the services of the right people who had the information that mattered.

Ming’s foreign connections had been enhanced by the creation of a trading company, Ming Enterprises Ltd. Through the functions of his new business hub, a few barely profitable, or unprofitable, deals would be more than compensated for by the now-available legitimate travel possibilities. The company provided opportunities to negotiate whatever was required to assist the business of illegal migration.

He had assembled an entire infrastructure for international dealings with a complete façade of apparent respectability. A series of strategies was developed for potential clients, one of which brought boatloads of migrants to Hong Kong, where he planned to utilise them in his expanding labour hire business, thus creating two sources of profit from the one operation. The financial possibilities that people smuggling offered appeared endless. A new dawn of criminal destiny had transpired, and Ming was uniquely placed to exploit it.

The exit of Vietnamese boat people during the 1970s and early 1980s proved to be a lucrative business for many people smugglers, and Ming was not an exception. The gold and cash flowed in, but his elaborate plan to utilise his clients in Hong Kong failed when the government contained them all in camps until they were repatriated back to Vietnam or to other destinations.

He was transformed by the success of the ventures. From a shady supplier of temporary labour he became a seemingly respectable and successful chairman of a company controlling an import-export business with interests throughout Southeast Asia. In reality, these interests were often no more than brief meetings with key personnel in banks, government departments, importers and exporters. However, they served the purpose of providing his company with sources of information, and references when his staff deemed it appropriate to ‘namedrop’.

Within the secretive, subdivided realm of the company, the people smuggling operations were shielded from other staff by Ming, Richard, Chang and the company accountant, Randolph Chen. The extraordinary degree of concealment that Ming had harboured all his adult life had moved to a new level within his expanded empire.

The company employed the services of field agents initially recruited for Ming’s Vietnamese boatpeople operations. The agents reported daily, and their activities and contacts were monitored on a wall chart in Ming’s office. In the heady boatpeople days, up to ten agents, mostly from China or Hong Kong, were contracted by Ming Enterprises for ground work in Vietnam. Their remuneration was determined by the number of successful bookings, and the definition of successful was cash or gold received from the boat people or their relatives.

As the number of Vietnamese boat people declined, so did the number of agents. A new structure of field operations was created to accommodate economic migrants from several countries claiming to be refugees. Ming’s senior and most trusted agent, a Pakistani hired by Chang in 2003, travelled extensively, coordinating Ming’s company operations in the illegal transportation of people to Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. Permanent agents lived in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Vietnam. A new agent, residing in London, had recently been selected by Chang to oversee a dramatically new people smuggling and trafficking undertaking. The work of all the agents was supported by spotters who explored for prospective customers and were paid on a per-head basis.

As Ming’s car edged slowly to his office, he cringed once again at the thought of his agents who in the past had, in his mind, attempted to both cheat and threaten him – even though none had known him or heard of his name. Ming’s obsession for obscurity had always managed to ensure that he and his company had remained invisible to all his agents, except two.

He had always held meetings with Chang to discuss the problems with agents and their behaviour. Chang had assisted Ming in forming and operating the labour hire business, and one of his distinctive commercial attributes was how to effectively deal with difficult people. Twelve years younger than Ming, he was an uncompromising example of human greed without compassion. Streetwise and with an extraordinary criminal insight, Chang carried an unobtrusive ruthlessness that enabled him to calmly assess a problem and then act without interference from the burdens of morals or compassion. His cold and heartless features made perfect partners in the people smuggling and trafficking business where little ethical differentiation was required between the treatment of people and that of animals.

In resolving Ming’s difficulties with cheating agents, Chang adapted solutions based on the techniques of the ‘old’ days. The Hong Kong gang resolution formula usually remained dependable.

The rain and wind had increased as Ming entered Queen’s Road Central and turned into the car park beneath his office building. He had unlocked the security switch to his floor and a minute later was inside his darkened office, noting that as usual, he was the first to arrive. Within fifteen minutes the others had appeared, both with solemn expressions.

The atmosphere was tense. A brief meeting was held to discuss the news they had all heard, but Chang suggested that further discussion be terminated until more details were known. They sat in silence, waiting for the commencement of the BBC World News.

At precisely 10.00 pm the program commenced and the newsreader, with an austere appearance, began the lead story as BREAKING NEWS flashed on the screen.

Border Agency officials in Folkestone have this morning discovered the bodies of sixteen adult males in a shipping container arriving via the Channel Tunnel. It’s believed all the victims died of suffocation. Two survivors afflicted with respiratory failure have been taken to hospital under police guard. The origin of the men is unknown but the initial investigation suggests they may have been Chinese nationals. Kent police are conducting preliminary enquiries. No further details are available but we will keep you updated as more information comes to hand.

President Obama has met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss ...

‘Turn it off!’ bellowed Ming, and Richard fumbled with the remote. Ming held his hand on his forehead and turned to Chang.

‘Is there any chance that could be someone else?’

‘One chance in a million,’ Chang replied dourly.

‘Where’s Puri?’ Ming demanded.

‘He arrived in Singapore a few hours ago to meet Jumani.’

‘Why is he going there now, just when this happens?’

‘It was going to be a quick trip and he would have been back in London before the truck arrived. But the ship was early and the container left before we knew what was happening.’

‘Perhaps we should have listened to Jumani,’ Richard said in a quiet voice. Silence. It was too late for pre-event decision analysis now – planning for the impact was the sole concern.

‘We have nothing to worry about,’ Ming said slowly. ‘Someone else has done this and was using our container.’ Ming’s expression demonstrated stiff defiance. ‘We have nothing to worry about,’ he repeated.

Ming heaved a sigh, stood up and walked to the window. He raised the blind and stared into the darkness. The rain and wind had both stopped. The lights along Queens Road Central had resumed their usual brightness, and The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building was restored to its customary night-time exterior. The scene offered him a signal of encouragement.

‘I’m going home,’ he said drearily. He turned from the window and walked out of his office in complete silence.

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CHAPTER 2

The Commercial Chartered Bank, Singapore

Tom Watkins picked up his telephone receiver and punched in an extension number.

‘I’m right now, Andy,’ he said quickly, and a few seconds later Andrew Clark walked into the compact but comfortable office. Clark glanced quickly at the twelfth floor view of the congested traffic on Orchard Road before seating himself in front of his manager’s desk. He placed on the desk a large client file marked Ming Enterprises Ltd.

‘That was Benson on the phone confirming Elliott’s flight ETA as 2:45 this afternoon,’ Watkins said with a bored voice. ‘I suppose I should pick him up,’ he continued dryly, ‘but for all the good he’ll do out here it will just be another wasted couple of days.’

‘Who is Elliott?’ Clark asked quizzically. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Oh, he’s new, only been with us for two weeks, and he has a new title, something like Manager – Foreign Branch Liaison or some such thing. I think he’s from Citibank. But if he walks into the building and does another Leeson on me, I think I’ll politely tell him to shut up.’

‘A Leeson on you?’ Clark asked with the client file already opened.

‘Yeah, you know, Nick Leeson.’

‘Who hasn’t heard of Nick Leeson?’ Clark replied smiling.

Watkins reclined in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

‘You know Andy, I should warn you, that it seems to be an essential part of a London management visit to the Singapore branch. They come off the street, walk into the foyer and let out, as Benson did last month, an Ahhh yes, so this is the same building Nick Leeson operated from when he destroyed Barings Bank,’ Watkins snapped. He smiled at his imitation and continued. ‘That bastard,’ he growled, ‘how could a hooligan like him destroy an historical institution like Barings?’

He chuckled and looked at Clark who shared his annoyance in hearing the relentless repetition on various bank policies by senior financial managers in London. Since Clark’s transfer to Singapore three weeks earlier he had noted a marked increase in the emphasis of procedural observance. Both men knew the underlying reason for the Leeson repetition – unsubtle reminders that Commercial Chartered in Singapore was not totally immune from internal fraud.

‘Mind you, it could have been worse,’ Watkins continued. ‘On Benson’s previous visit I had to withstand another rendition of how Barings handled the Louisiana Land Purchase from Napoleon. Did you know that, Andy?’

‘No ... I didn’t ... um, anyway,’ Clark said with a mild impatience, and Watkins quickly sat upright and allowed the momentum of his chair’s movement to lunge him across his desk with an outstretched hand resting on the file.

‘Okay, so what do you want to know?’

‘I’ve being reviewing the file for Chen’s visit tomorrow, and it’s really strange,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, it’s weird when you look at the whole Ming picture.’

‘The whole picture,’ interrupted Watkins, ‘is where my first piece of advice when you arrived here comes into play – forget about what you have been doing in London and start your whole business thinking process over again. This is a totally different commercial environment and it goes beyond what we would call normal trading practices. It has a huge amount to do with personalities, cultural idiosyncrasies and a review of the very definition of what is right and wrong.’

‘Alright,’ replied Clark, ‘I get all that, and it’s slowly coming. But tell me this – I saw a handwritten note in the file – and I think it’s your writing – saying that Randolph Chen had been in jail. What’s all that about?’

Again Watkins smiled, ‘Chen? Ha! I call him dumb and dumber. The story is that in the late nineties he worked for a guy called Kwang who was a crook masquerading as a businessman – not uncommon in Hong Kong – they usually own a hotel or car park but make their real money in other ways, and when necessary launder this through their legitimate business. Kwang believed there was a good prospect of losing his assets when Hong Kong went back to China in ninety-seven, so he spread a lot of his money amongst his staff – apparently he didn’t trust his family – giving them temporary legal ownership, just in case. He would get it back later in different ways. Chen was allocated some bank accounts and he couldn’t help himself. He transferred the cash to Thailand and he and his wife did a runner. When Kwang learnt of this he went ballistic and told a triad friend to find Chen and knock him off. Then Kwang realised if Chen went, then so did anything Chen owned and that included his money. Chen was found in Bangkok and he returned to Honkers, got on his knees, begged forgiveness, signed documents admitting his guilt and ended up in jail for three years.’