Despite White House denials, the Clinton administration has had major contacts with Asian organized crime syndicates such as the Triads, and has befriended kingpins of international prostitution operations.
Unraveling the tangled web involving Bill Clinton, Beijing and Asian organized crime starts with the president’s close, and self-described “old,” friendship with Arkansas restaurant owner Charlie Yah Lin Trie. Trie, who managed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Clinton and the Democratic party, is alleged to be a member of the “4 Seas” Triad, an organization of underworld lords based in Hong Kong.
Indeed, much of the money donated by Trie came directly following visits to the White House by others linked to the Triads, including Macau millionaire Ng Lapseng, whose main business is his Fortuna hotel and hostess service of brothels.
“Ng LapSeng spent two days inside the residence at the White House with Bill Clinton,” stated Ed Timperlake, co-author of “Year of the Rat,” the runaway best-selling book on Bill Clinton’s Chinese connections.
“Ng came in to visit with huge wads of cash in his pockets,” said Timperlake during an exclusive WorldNetDaily interview. “Not just an oval office coffee visit, but inside the presidential living quarters. Ng Lapseng even obtained a clear photograph of himself with President Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton, standing in front of a DNC (Democratic National Committee) emblem during a fundraiser. It’s in the book.”
The brochure advertising Ng’s Fortuna hotel boasts, “attractive and attentive hostesses from China, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma together with erotic girls from Europe and Russia offer you an exciting and unforgettable evening with friends or business associates.”
|Ng Lapseng with Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House. Photo courtesy of the House Reform and Oversight Committee.|
Ng’s cash links to Clinton are direct and deep. He entered the United States with over $300,000 cash in his pockets, and subsequently visited the White House 12 times, according to Timperlake’s book. In addition, Ng wired Charlie Trie “from $1.1 million to $1.5 million. … Of this amount, at least $645,000 made its way through Trie to the DNC as illegally laundered campaign contributions.”
One of Ng’s operations includes DNC fundraiser Ted Sioeng in a firm called Ang-Du International. Ang-Du, according to the Wall Street Journal, abducts Thai women for Macau brothels. Sioeng, however, is best known for his photographic appearance with Vice President Al Gore at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple.
Clinton’s ties to international trafficking in women have even caused some traditional supporters to oppose the administration. “The Clinton administration and the World Bank helped Thailand organize and nationalize their prostitution business,” stated National Organization for Women Dulles (Virginia) Chapter President Marie Jose Ragab. “It is state-sponsored trafficking in women, complete with passports, transportation and infrastructure.”
“Last year in Thailand alone, trafficking 600,000 women and girls brought $5 billion into the country,” Ragab wrote in the NOW Times back in 1992. “The women and girls, the commodity, are invisible. There are millions of them with no identity, no international laws to protect them, no one to reclaim them. Their passports are confiscated by the traffickers upon arriving in countries they may never have heard of. Sold or leased by catalogues, on videos, or ‘sight unseen,’ they are ‘parked’ in centers to allegedly work as maids, telephone operators, mothers’ helpers. Eighty percent will be seriously physically abused.”
“This is a form of slave trade,” Ragab said recently. “It is worse now because of the Clintons. It was typical for this administration” to meet with Ng Lapseng. “This is one of the reasons why we endorsed Republicans this year.”
The documented contacts between Triad gangsters and the White House also include a “Presidential Business Development Mission,” personally approved by Bill Clinton.
According to U.S. Commerce Department materials, in September 1994, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Loral Aerospace CEO Bernard Schwartz were invited to sail on an evening paradise cruise from Hong Kong with a “who’s who” of Triad business families.
The official Commerce Department “guest list” for a Sept. 2, 1994 dinner on board the “Pacific Princess” included several family-run businesses closely associated with the Communists in Beijing and the Triad gangs such as Raymond Kwok, C.H. Tung, Walter Kwok, Canning Fok, and Chinese billionaire Li Ka-Shing. Who are these people?
- Li Ka-Shing teamed with Robert Kwok and Henry Fok, according to a recent biography titled “Li Ka-Shing,” to form the China International Trust Investment Company (CITIC), described in a 1997 Rand Corporation report as an “investment concern under China’s governmental State Council.” The guest list for the Pacific Princess included the Executive Director of CITIC, Robert Adams.
- The Fok family leader, Henry Fok, is reported to be a member of the 14K Triad. According to Timperlake and co-author Bill Triplett, “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.”
- The Kwok family, reportedly led by Robert Kwok, allegedly is involved in the heroin smuggling business inside Burma. However, Peter Kwok served as a consultant to the China Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO), and COSCO Hong Kong Holdings, a company owned by Li Ka-Shing. In 1989, Kwok helped CITIC and Li Ka-Shing raise $120 million to buy a Hughes-built communications satellite for AsiaSat, a company part owned by the Chinese Army unit COSTIND (the Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense). Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Ca., also knows the Kwok family well. Feinstein’s financial ties include her husband, Richard Blum, who is part owner of the far east investment firm, Newbridge Capitol Corp. Blum’s partner at Newbridge is Peter Kwok.
- CITIC, the joint firm formed by Li Ka-Shing, Henry Fok, and Robert Kwok also has a special status. “CITIC”, states the Rand report, “became identified with the PLA as a result of the scandal surrounding Wang Jun and his visit to the White House on 6 February 1996.” In February 1996, President Clinton met with Chinese arms dealer Wang Jun after taking a donation from Arkansas DNC donor Charlie Trie. The Rand Corp. noted that “Wang Jun is both director of CITIC and Chairman of Poly Group, the arms trading company of the General Staff Department. Poly Technologies, Ltd., was founded in 1984, ostensibly as a subsidiary of CITIC, although it was later exposed to be the primary commercial arm of the PLA General Staff Department’s Equipment Sub-Department.”
What does it all mean? “The leadership in Beijing openly states that there are ‘good patriotic’ Triads,” stated Timperlake. “The merging of the Triads, financiers like Li Ka-Shing, and the leadership in Beijing is a nasty law enforcement problem. It is almost state-sponsored gangsterism.”