Booming drug trafficking and scam centres in Southeast Asia by the same criminal groups
According to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, transnational networks have built an economy capable of jointly making narcotics on an industrial scale, managing online fraud, laundering money, and infiltrating the lucrative markets of Japan and South Korea. Drug seizures reached an all-time high for the third consecutive year.
Bangkok (Thailand) – When 16 drug production laboratories were dismantled in January this year in Shan State, northern Myanmar, local authorities found nearly 2.5 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine, 500 litres of liquid methamphetamine, and 93 tonnes of various chemicals. Less than 800 metres away, they also uncovered an online scam centre, equipped with Starlink satellite terminals, the same used by groups that form the armed opposition to Myanmar’s military regime.
Two distinct illegal industries, synthetic drug synthesis and online fraud, operating in symbiosis, sharing the same protection. According to a recent report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), this convergence has been ongoing for years in the lower Mekong region, but has only recently been confirmed.
Transnational criminal groups are diversifying their investments across drug trafficking, cyber fraud, and online gambling, which is illegal in China (where such criminal groups often originate), exploiting the same grey areas of political control along Southeast Asia's borders.
A recent article in Nikkei Asia further confirmed the findings of Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia, a report that describes the links between illegal drug networks in Southeast Asia and East Asia.
In Tokyo police recently arrested Hu Shi, 44, a Chinese-born Cypriot national believed to be a top executive in the Prince Holding Group, a well-known conglomerate founded by Chen Zhi, under sanctions by the United States and the United Kingdom for scam-related activities that include luring young people with false promises of employment, only to be detained and forced to commit online scams.
While Chen Zhi was arrested in Cambodia in January 2025 and subsequently extradited to China, his alleged right-hand man sought permanent residency in Japan.
This is the same development described in the UNODC report: proceeds from criminal economy in Southeast Asia are being used to penetrate East Asian markets, starting with Japan and South Korea.
The numbers of a frighteningly growing problem
The data presented in the report paint a disturbing picture. For the third consecutive year, methamphetamine seizures reached an all-time high in the Mekong countries and East Asia: 349 tonnes in 2025, a 48 per cent increase from 236 tonnes in 2024. By comparison, 65 tonnes was seized in 2015, compared to just 9.2 tonnes in 2005.
According to the UNODC, the trend reflects improved law enforcement capabilities, but also shows the incredible capacity for synthetic drug production, which law enforcement agencies are struggling to cope with.
Ninety-four per cent of seizures (327 tonnes) took place in Southeast Asia, three quarters in the lower Mekong region (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam).
Seizures of crystal methamphetamine in 2025 jumped by 75 per cent over the previous year, from 102 to 180 tonnes, while seizures of yaba pills (as methamphetamine tablets are known locally) went up by 28 per cent, or nearly 1.9 billion tablets.
Thailand alone intercepted 1.2 billion tablets, 62 per cent of the regional total, while 245 million pills were found in Laos and 377 million in Myanmar, a 66 per cent increase compared to 2024.
Regarding ketamine, the leap is even more impressive: 52.5 tonnes seized in 2025, up 185 per cent from the 18.4 tonnes in 2024. Malaysia and Myanmar together accounted for 60 per cent of the total.
For ecstasy, regional seizures exceeded 24.9 million tablets, with Malaysia as the main hub, with 14.9 million tablets seized, a 156 per cent increase year-over-year.
Methamphetamine, however, remains the main drug in terms of regional demand, accounting for 87 per cent of arrests in Thailand, 82.3 per cent in Indonesia, and 96.5 per cent in the Philippines.
Overall, it accounts for over 90 per cent of addiction treatment visits in Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines.
In Thailand, the number of people in ketamine treatment has quadrupled since 2021 (2,101 cases in 2025). In Vietnam, admissions more than doubled between 2023 and 2024 (from 4,319 to 10,169).
In Hong Kong, 35 per cent of ketamine users are women (more than heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamine), in Singapore the figure is 33.3 per cent.
Myanmar’s War, the main facilitator of illegal trafficking
The January 2026 operation in Hsipaw and Mongyai townships, Shan State, the largest ever conducted by Myanmar authorities against underground laboratories, revealed a production capacity that goes well beyond basic synthesis.
Thirty-eight different chemicals were recovered from three main sites. The labs were capable of synthesising methamphetamine through two distinct chemical pathways: the first, long documented, starts from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (substances found in common cold medications and therefore long subjected to increasingly stringent controls in pharmacies worldwide). The second uses phenylacetone, an alternative pathway developed specifically to circumvent ephedrine controls.
But the laboratories were also equipped to produce the initial precursors on-site, without having to import them from abroad: phenylacetic acid (a chemical subject to international controls because it can be transformed into phenylacetone) was used to synthesise methamphetamine.
Some 20 tonnes of benzyl cyanide was seized, a huge quantity, used as the initial precursor in one of the chemical chains that leads, once again, to phenylacetone, and therefore to methamphetamine.
It is not classified as an internationally controlled substance, which explains why it is relatively easy to obtain.
Several routes branch out from these laboratories in northern Myanmar, but two are the main ones: one to Thailand (plants that handle the final stages of production, packaging, and distribution close to the border have been dismantled) and a second route, already active but less documented, that passes through Rakhine State, one of the epicentres of Myanmar’s civil war, and from there it goes to Bangladesh and northeastern India, another region afflicted by inter-ethnic conflict.
Diversification of maritime routes in a global market
Foreign tankers, fishing vessels, and ferries with cargoes of several tonnes were intercepted in 2025: 2,400 kg off Rayong, on the Thai coast; 2,100 kg in the Riau Islands, Indonesia; 1,572 kg in the sea off East Malaysia; and two tonnes in Bangkok ready for shipment to Koh Samui, a Thai archipelago.
The variety of vessels is no coincidence.
The seizure of 1,500 kg in Zambales, Philippines, in June 2025 confirms the expansion of maritime trafficking in the region, with methamphetamine also coming from Mexico, Canada, the United States, Afghanistan, South Africa, Nigeria, and Guinea.
While retail prices of crystal methamphetamine are plummeting in Southeast Asia, US$ 13.50 per gram in Thailand and US$ 5.50 in Myanmar, one gram goes for US$ 508 in Japan and US$ 400 in South Korea.
It is understandable why criminal groups are intensifying their attempts to penetrate these markets.
In Japan, seizures from airline passengers rose to 664 kg in 2025, a 92.5 per cent increase over the previous year, which saw another all-time high, although most of the narcotics originated in North America.
South Korea also recorded an all-time record for ketamine seizures (140 kg, +57 per cent), with the majority of shipments coming from Europe.
New drugs: etomidate, vaping and “happy water”
In addition to traditional drugs, the report flags three trends that risk making the battle even more complicated in the coming years.
Etomidate, a hypnotic anaesthetic used in medicine, has become a widespread drug across the region since 2021, mainly trafficked through e-cigarettes. Plants have been seized in Thailand (run by a Chinese criminal network), Indonesia and Vietnam.
In Singapore, in the first half of 2025 alone, etomidate-containing vaping samples had already surpassed the entire 2024 total.
More broadly, e-cigarettes have become a tool for consuming a vast array of illegal substances: methamphetamine, MDMA, ketamine, synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones, tryptamines, DMT.
Meanwhile the so-called happy water, a mixture of MDMA, ketamine, benzodiazepines and caffeine, is now available across Southeast Asia. In 2025, the UNODC report notes, it was expected to make its appearance in liquid and canned form, no longer just as a powder to dissolve.
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12/02/2016 15:14
26/02/2025 20:17
