On 8 December, a report from CNN is concerned with a $50 million dollar investment to build a port in the Laotian town of Ban Mom, and a man named Zhao Wei is said to have participated in a ground breaking ceremony for the project. According to the US Treasury, Zhao is one of the world’s most notorious narcotics traffickers, running a global criminal organisation involved in child prostitution, the illicit trade of wildlife including tigers, rhinos and elephants, and drug trafficking – all from his private corner of Laos and using a Hong Kong company called Kings Romans. This was the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ) and Zhao is the chairman of the GTSEZ, which was named after the lawless border region where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. For years, the Golden Triangle was the world’s largest source of heroin and now it produces synthetic drugs, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/07/asia/laos-ban-mom-port-zhao-wei-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
I had omitted the following link (as it did not seem to generate much interest!), but it seemed time to add it again and say that, if you would like to make a (polite) gesture and help me with my removal and computer costs, I have a page at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/KoIvM842y
