Massive 700kg ‘ice’ haul spotlights Japanese yakuza links with Chinese gangsters
- The drugs are believed to have come from China, raising concerns Chinese gangsters could seek to gain a greater foothold in Japan
- Yakuza gangs have been struggling to reassert themselves after years of crackdowns and feuding, with some turning to drugs and guns to fund their operations
The arrest of seven Chinese nationals over a 700kg haul of crystal methamphetamine – powdered and packed into wooden boards and transported into Japan – has raised fears of increasing links between overseas triads and yakuza gangsters, whose waning influence is fuelling a need for drug income.
The seizure, the second largest of its kind made by Japanese police, had a street value of around US$310 million.
The price of the highly addictive crystal meth soars in Japan, which is far from the main Asian producer nation of Myanmar and separated by sea from the regional hub of precursor chemicals – China.
Two of the Chinese nationals were arrested last Thursday after a weeks-long police surveillance operation in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba, the Asahi newspaper quoted National Police Agency officials as saying.
Five others were arrested earlier in April, the report said, as police allowed the syndicate to operate for several weeks in order to catch more suspects.
The powdered drugs were concealed inside 175 large boards used in construction which had been hollowed out inside, the paper reported.
They were transported to Tokyo in early March, in seven containers aboard a ship which originated in Dubai but made a port call in the Chinese city of Ningbo.