ROTTERDAM - She is known, quaintly, as Little Sister Ping. But there is nothing endearing about her business.
The woman in her mid-30s is from a tiny village in the Fujian province of China (which is almost all that is known about her after years of police investigation) and she
is among the most prolific traffickers of human cargo in Europe.
She has built up a fearsome reputation for running a criminal empire that combines the efficiency of a modern conglomerate with vicious, punitive violence. She is also suspected of being one of the main organisers of Perry Wacker's fatal shipment.
In Westkruisad, Rotterdam's shabby and windswept Chinatown, they shudder when they talk about the retribution Sister Ping is supposed to exact on those who cross her.
The criminal Snakehead gangs are ruthless in protecting the profits of trading in illegal immigrants. And these profits are huge. European law agencies estimate the business to be worth about £8.5 billion ($30 billion) a year. American agencies say it is nearer £21 billion.
Sister Ping moves widely throughout Europe on her Dutch passport to organise the routes and she is also seemingly able to travel in and out of China with ease. She is said to have powerful connections there in the Communist Party and among police.
This is of great importance for the smugglers. The illegal immigrants almost always leave China openly by air, with the Snakeheads organising exit visas for them.
Sister Ping has been to London several times and, according to police sources, has a business relationship with a Chinese man with extensive property interests in Soho.
The ability of Sister Ping to avoid the clutches of the law has given her a legendary omnipotence among sections of the Chinese community. It can be difficult to separate the myth from the reality.
To complicate matters, there is a Big Sister Ping serving a sentence in North America for immigrant smuggling. Little Sister Ping is said to get very upset if she is confused with the other Ping, whom she regards as an unsophisticated woman who has never risen much above her peasant stock.
What is known is that her family name is Chen and she grew up in Fujian, where most of her consignments of would-be migrants come from. She is said to be beautiful (although no photograph of her is available) and always stylishly dressed.
She likes gambling, not in the dens of the various Chinatowns, but the casinos where the rich and famous play. She has a holiday home in the Greek islands and her lover, Peter, is one of the leaders of the 14K Triad gangsters in Rotterdam.
They do not like to talk much about Ping or Peter in Rotterdam's Chinatown. At the Nighttown Cafe a group of young men drinking late in the evening become visibly nervous even at the mention of the name. Eventually one, who says his name is Han Zuong, ventures: "It is better not to talk about them."
In Rotterdam, the Snakeheads use gangs of Turks and Dutch to organise the transportation to England. Chief among them was Gurzel Ozcan, who has served a six-month sentence for smuggling illegal immigrants. He has a long experience of moving people illicitly across frontiers.
Ozcan, 34, and one of his lieutenants, Haci Mustafa Demir, are in prison in the Netherlands, along with nine others facing various charges of manslaughter and conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants.
But even "hard men" such as Ozcan and Demir are afraid of the Chinese gangs. "Being Turks, they are very macho," says Jan Boone, Demir's defence lawyer. "But make no mistake, they are very scared of the Chinese. They are scared to open their mouths."
In this hierarchy of crime, Wacker and his fellow defendant Ying Guo are minor players, as are the others in the support network through Europe.
The Independent has seen police documents in which the two survivors from Wacker's lorry named a man called Ah Qu as the main Snakehead in the Fujian province. The police in China have arrested two other supposed leading local players.
Dutch and British police are sceptical about claims by Chinese police who, they believe, suffer from endemic corruption . And a Dutch detective said: "To destroy the organisation you have to get to Sister Ping and the figures close to her. But that is proving extremely difficult.
"The Chinese are very tightly knit, they don't mix with the others and they terrorise their own people into silence."
- INDEPENDENT
ROTTERDAM - She is known, quaintly, as Little Sister Ping. But there is nothing endearing about her business.
The woman in her mid-30s is from a tiny village in the Fujian province of China (which is almost all that is known about her after years of police investigation) and she
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.