Staff. Sgt. Lui Lok, one of the infamous “Five Dragons” of the Hong Kong underworld, who pumped millions of dollars of his ill-gotten gains into B.C., is being laid to rest Thursday in a Metro Vancouver cemetery.
Lui Lok was part of a cabal of five station sergeants in the Hong Kong police force during the early 1970s. The group known as the Five Dragons had geographical control of police jurisdictions in Hong Kong and collected graft while allowing the triads to conduct their criminal activities.
The most infamous of the corrupt cops was Lui, dubbed the $500-million man. He and the three other Dragons fled to Vancouver in the mid-'70s before seeking sanctuary in Taiwan.
They left their families behind.
The fifth Dragon, Hon Kwing Shum, was arrested in Vancouver at about the same time but later fled to Taiwan while on bail.
It is unclear when or where Lui, who was in his nineties, died. His family and friends preparing for this morning’s ceremony at Forest Lawn cemetery in Burnaby were tightlipped, reported the Ming Pao newspaper in Vancouver.
At the funeral hall, a large portrait of Lui Lok stood over wreaths bearing his name, amid paper effigies of houses, cars and cash — or so-called “hell money to bribe officials in the next world.”
According to ancient Chinese customs, these paper offerings are to be burnt after the funeral service so that the departed can take it with him or her to establish a prosperous afterlife.
The ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. and is expected to attract some key figures of the Chinese underworld.
According to a covert police study originally published in The Province in 1999, Lui was part of an exodus of former Royal Hong Kong cops to Canada, who fled a corruption crackdown in the former British colony.
The study identified 44 corrupt Hong Kong officers, dubbed the "millionaire cops," their wives, children and concubines and found them to have invested tens of millions of dollars in businesses and real estate in Canada, mostly in B.C. and Ontario.
Asian organized-crime investigators with the help of Immigration Canada officials found that 30 of the cops had invested in at least 13 B.C. companies and purchased about 50 pieces of property in the Vancouver area.
These included large homes in West Vancouver and Shaughnessy, commercial buildings, a shopping mall and vacant acreages. Others invested in restaurants and bought shares in a private hospital.
The study also found that four of them, whose average salary was about HK$30,000 a year each, had built a two-tower, 600-room hotel in Toronto valued at more than $20 million.
"It is not exactly understood how much influence or power these former police officials possess regarding Chinese criminal activities in North America but, because of past ties, former influence, possible triad connections and money illegally obtained, they definitely could influence Chinese criminal patterns as we know them today," the study said.
Insp. Garry Clement, a former RCMP liaison officer in Hong Kong, reported to his bosses at the time that police intelligence showed that by 1975 at least 29 former Hong Kong policemen with considerable wealth that was disproportionate to their income were found in Canada.
Clement said the money brought in by the Hong Kong cops was likely to have been legitimized through a variety of means and that there was very little the authorities could do now, unless the same players are actively involved in criminal enterprises.
Brian McAdam, a former immigration-control officer in Hong Kong, in an earlier interview with The Province, said he managed to stop at least six ex-cops suspected of being affiliated with triads from entering Canada in the '80s.
"But many more got through with their connections or by pumping money into investor immigration schemes," he said. "Some of these guys had close connections in high places and we were not seeing all the paperwork."
The exodus of the corrupt cops to Canada can be traced back to the mid-'70s when the newly formed agency called Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began enforcing prevention-of-bribery laws in Hong Kong.
In the ensuing investigations, ICAC brought 260 police officers to court after finding 18 criminal syndicates operating in the Hong Kong police force.
Asian crime investigators said that when Lui came to Canada, scores of other detectives and staff-sergeants followed his lead to Vancouver while others left for Brazil and Taiwan.
The richest among them are estimated to have fled with a combined illicit fortune of about US$80 million.
During a trial in Hong Kong in the '80s, a notorious Asian drug king recounted how "Godfather" Lui arrested about 100 members of one triad society during a bust on a restaurant in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district.
This was one of the "fake busts" created by the Five Dragons to show a semblance of order while giving corrupt officers an easy outlet to eliminate rival crime rings, the court heard.
Under an immunity agreement the drug king, Ng Shek-ho, told the High Court that he paid tens of thousands of dollars to Lui, whom he called "old chief," in exchange for protection for his drug and gambling dens.
"I had to pay him HK$30,000 to HK$40,000 every one or two months to make sure there would be no police interference with my importing business [drugs from Thailand]," said Ng, better known as "Limpy Ng" for his handicap.
Lui apparently managed to rack up HK$8.5 million in corrupt receipts in just 15 months before he left the force abruptly, a figure the High Court later called "appalling."
The Hong Kong government later initiated civil proceedings to go after the loot amassed by the fugitive cops.
It is believed that Hong Kong authorities reached an out-of-court settlement with Lui’s family, who remained in Vancouver, in 1986.
In 2008, the Hong Kong government also reached a deal with another of the Five Dragons, Hon Kwing-shum, who also fled to Vancouver with millions of dollars he had accumulated in bribes.
Hon Kwing-shum, alias Hon Shum or Hon Sum, served in the Royal Hong Kong Police from September 1940 until he retired in August 1971, during which time he was earning a total of about C$35,000 annually.
But upon retirement, he and his beneficiaries owned millions of dollars worth of assets. These included over 50 properties, various bank accounts and investments in Hong Kong, Florida, Thailand and B.C.
Hon died at the age of 76 in August 1999 in Taipei after fleeing from Vancouver, where he established his large family, who live here today.
Read more:
http://www.theprovince.com/news/ ... /3051322/story.html
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