Top 10 Chinese Triad Criminals

 

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Peter Gangs are considered to be part of organized crime and they provide a level of organization and resources that support much larger and more complex criminal transactions than individuals. For those gangs, their leader or Gangster is a key role. Here is a list of 10 most famous gangsters in China since 1990s.

1. Qiao Si (乔四)

Qiao Si or Song Yongjia is a famous gangster in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. He was was executed to death by the government in  June 1991. From 1986 his criminal gang had cornered demolition and construction industry, and dispossessed many hotels and garages in Heilongjiang Province. He also bribed local senior government officials with money and women. He run a protection racket, injured people with knives and raped many women.

In 1990, Li Ruihuan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee went to inspect Heilongjiang and saw signs of the gang. He then bypassed local Public Security Bureau and arrested Qiao Si, Hao Quezi, Xiao Ke and other gang leaders.

2. Yu Zuomin (禹作敏)

Yu Zuomin, the village headman of one of China’s most richest villages, was arrested for ‘shielding and hiding the criminals and standing in the way of police in their duty’ in April 1993. It started with a village murder that a victim had been killed in China’s richest village in Dec 1992. On Feb 18 next year, came stories of a stand-off lasting several days as armed villagers held off squads of local police who had come from the nearby city of Tianjin to investigate the crime.  After two months discussion of the central government, on April, Yu Zuomin was arrested.

3. Lai Changxing (赖昌星)

Lai Changxing (born 1958) was the founder and Chairman of the lucrative Yuanhua Group in Xiamen. Lai was found guilty of smuggling container ships filled with billions of dollars worth of luxury cars, cigarettes, oil, textiles and chemicals into China’s southern port city of Xieman throughout the 1990s, and then bribing 64 government officials to look the other way.  By 1999 he was described by several media organizations as “China’s most wanted fugitive” and was arrested.

Lai evaded Chinese authorities and went to Canada, where he resided in Vancouver. After a lengthy extradition battle and diplomatic negotiations Canadian authorities deported him to China on July 22, 2011 upon promises that he would not be executed. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

4. Zhang Ziqiang (张子强)

Zhang Ziqiang was born in Yulin City, Guangxi Province. He was believed to make a plan of kidnapping Victor Li, the son of Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong business magnate and the richest person of Asia, asking for hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars as ransom, the high amount of ransom was recorded in the Guinness Book, but Li did not call the police. November 12, 1998, Zhang Ziqiang was sentenced to death by Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court.

5. Wan Kuok-koi (尹国驹)

Macau crime boss Wan Kuok-koi known as Broken Tooth Koi was the leader of the Macau branch of the 14K Triad. He was released after more than 14 years in prison on 1 December 2012. Wan Kuok-koi was convicted of loan sharking, money laundering and being a gang leader in November 1999. As head of Macau’s 14K triad, Wan waged a brutal war with rival triads, or organised crime gangs, for dominance of the lucrative VIP rooms in Macau’s casinos.

He was arrested shortly after a bomb destroyed the car of Macau’s director of investigative police, who was out jogging when the vehicle exploded and was unscathed by the assassination attempt.

6. Charles Heung  (向华强)

Charles Heung’s brother Jimmy is a top triad figure in HK – but he is considered a “good triad”. Both of these brothers apparently truly love film. Charles is a producer as well but has also been acting in films since the early 70s. Rumor has it that the film True Mob Story with Andy Lau and Alex Fong was based to some degree on their lives. His father, Heung Chin, was the head of all Triads in Hong Kong. However, he was expelled from Hong Kong in the late 1950s and fled to Taiwan.

7. Henry Fok (霍英东)

He is reported to be a member of the 14K Triad. According to Ed Timperlake and Bill Triplett, co-authors of “Red Dragon Rising”: “Henry Fok first made his name by running United Nations-embargoed goods to China during the Korean War. His son was later convicted for trying to bring Chinese machine guns into the United States.”

8. Liu Yong (刘涌)

Liu was sentenced to death and given a 15-million-yuan fine by the Tieling Intermediate People’s Court in April 2002. Liu Yong is believed to be the leader of a gang in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Liu, a former board chairman of Shenyang Jiayang Group, was charged with organizing, leading and actively participating in a mafia-style group, willful and malicious injury, pillage and illegal business operations. He was also charged with tax evasion, extortion, illegally holding or hiding a firearm or ammunition, theft and bribery.

9. Hsu Hai-ching (许海清)

Born in 1913, Hsu was a first-generation Taiwanese who got involved in organized crime after the KMT came to Taiwan. He was best known by the nick names “Mosquito Brother” and “the Great Arbitrator” in Zhu Lian Bang or The Bamboo Union, which has more than 10,000 members worldwide.

The Bamboo Union’s members are involved in virtually every facet of illegal activity imaginable – from the standard activities of prostitution, gambling and extortion locally, to gun-running, drug-smuggling and human trafficking on a global scale. Hsu died on April 6 2005 at the age of 93.

10. Zhou Guanglong (周广龙)

Zhou’s organized crime began in 1990 when he collected “protection money” at the railway station of Guangzhou, the province’s capital. Later he used violence to monopolize some major markets along the railway lines. In 1999, Zhou and his followers established a “company” to control three long distance cargo railway lines. People who were reluctant to cooperate with Zhou were severely beaten. Zhou was sentenced to death on 2012 while his 20 followers were all given varied jail terms.