The rise of Wan Kuok Koi — popularly known as ‘Broken Tooth’— and the enterprises run by him and his associates represent the new face of Chinese investment in Myanmar—and the criminalization of the country under the current junta, The Irrawaddy reported. Wan Kuok Koi, was arrested in May 1998 in connection with a bomb explosion in a minivan. He was incarcerated in a purpose-built top-security detention facility on Coloane.
Even though no evidence of his involvement in that attack was ever revealed in court. Instead, he was brought to justice on old charges related to intimidation of employees at the Lisboa Casino in Macau, loan-sharking and suspicion of being a member of “an illegal organization”. In plain language, that meant a triad, the secret societies that are the Chinese equivalent of the Mafia, The Irrawady reported.
After a lengthy and complicated trial—where one witness after another was struck by sudden bouts of amnesia and could not remember anything—he was nonetheless sentenced to 15 years in prison and had all his assets confiscated in November 1999. This came a month before Macau reverted to Chinese rule and became, like Hong Kong, a “Special Administrative Region” (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China. Among the many outlandish ventures Wan was accused of running, and made public by jurists during the trial, was a weapons business in Cambodia, where he allegedly sought to trade in rockets, missiles, tanks, armored vehicles and other kinds of military equipment in the then civil war-wracked country.
Using his old connections, Wan nestled himself back into the casino business in Macau and, after a few years, launched a cryptocurrency called ‘Dragon Coin’. He also established three entities operating out of Cambodia: The Hongmen History and Culture Association; the Dongmei Group, which is officially headquartered in Hong Kong; and the Palau China Hung-Mun Cultural Association, supposedly based in the Pacific Ocean nation Palau. Citing December 9, 2020 statement by the US Treasury Department, The Irrawaddy reported that Hongmen History and Culture Association in particular soon spread its influence across Southeast Asia, first in Cambodia—and then in Myanmar. Wan’s Dongmei Group is a major investor in the casino enclaves near Myawaddy that were established after a faction of the Karen National Union and its Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) broke away, entered into ceasefire agreements with the Myanmar military, and became a Border Guard Force (BGF).
Wan is also known to be involved in projects in Mong Pawk southeast of the Panghsang (Pangkham) headquarters of the United Wa State Army on the border between Myanmar and China. According to a July 2020 report by the United States Institute of Peace, “The Dongmei Company itself appears to have incorporated as a business in Hong Kong on March 3, 2020, but is operating out of Kuala Lumpur. Wan promotes the project through the official public WeChat of the Hongmen Association, as well as in partnership with a Guangdong-based representative of the Huaguan Holding Company.” It is evident that Wan has powerful connections and is protected by high-level officials in China.
Citing a researcher who is following developments in Myanmar’s frontier areas, The Irrawaddy stated, “Wan Kuok Koi clearly has tremendous influence across China, Hong Kong and Macau, close relations with the local government in Guangdong province, and very deep ties with the [Chinese Communist] Party’s united front organizations and Overseas Chinese Associations. In my view, the Party sees him as useful in doing a lot of its political work—both in Hong Kong and Macau, and in Southeast Asia more broadly.” It is quite surprising how it has been possible for a former convicted felon and alleged leader of an organized crime group to become an influential and seemingly untouchable business tycoon. links between officialdom and secret societies became obvious to the outside world in the run-up to Hong Kong’s return to the “motherland”, which eventually happened in 1997. On April 8, 1993, Tao Siju, chief of China’s Public Security Bureau, gave an informal press conference to a group of local reporters in the then still British territory.
After making it clear that the “counter-revolutionaries” who had demonstrated for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 would not have their long prison sentences reduced, he began talking about the triads: “As for organizations like the triads in Hong Kong, as long as they are patriotic, as long as they are concerned with Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, we should unite with them.” Tao also invited “the patriotic triads” to come to China to set up businesses there.
The statement sent shockwaves through Hong Kong’s then professional police force and there was an uproar in the still independent media.