SOUTHEAST Asia’s drug gangs are making over US$60 billion a year pumping out record amounts of methamphetamine, then laundering the profits through the region’s mushrooming number of casinos, a UN study showed today.
” safe, conservative estimate of over US$60 billion a year,” is being hoovered up by the meth lords of southeast Asia alone, Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC’s regional representative, told reporters in Bangkok at the report’s launch. Outlaw motorcycle gangs from Australia and New Zealand are getting in on the act, moving massive shipments from southeast Asia to their domestic markets, where the price surges, the “Transnational Organised Crime in Southeast Asia: Evolution, Growth and Impact” study added.