Macau’s war on terror
Ten years after the arrest of gang leader Wan Kuok Koi,
Macau CLOSER revisits the city’s darkest days.
May 1, 1998. This was the day when the war against the triads terrorising Macau reached its climax. In the morning, a car bomb destroyed the vehicle of Police Chief Marques Baptista, while he was jogging on Guia Hill. Later that day, the police chief led a group of heavily armed policemen into Casino Lisboa and arrested the confessed leader of the most powerful criminal organisation in Macau, Wan Kuok Koi. He was in a restaurant, brazenly watching a self-produced movie about his own life, and offered no resistance. Handcuffed alongside other mob suspects, Wan was later paraded through the Lisboa’s main entrance in what became a surprising yet long-awaited photo opportunity for local media. The image of Wan, subdued at the scene of his arrest next to Mr. Baptista, made instant history – and a good number of headlines the day after.
But when this action-packed day was finally over, Macau’s residents had mixed feelings about its outcome. Sure, they were more than tired of the long period spent coexisting with cold-blooded murders and all sorts of acts of intimidation, and they felt a pronounced sense of relief after Wan’s arrest. But many of them were also deeply sceptical of the government’s ability to fight the underworld and feared a scenario of mounting chaos should the triads begin to retaliate. In other words, the media show covering Wan’s arrest had been far from reassuring, and there was a general feeling that things would only get worse before they got better.
They were not wrong, in fact. The violence intensified throughout the year of 1998, claiming victims not only from within the ranks of the criminal organisations, but also from within the law enforcement agencies (see Gangland Years). Observers were unanimous in stating that Macau was experiencing some of the darkest days in its long history.
“Triads operate with total impunity,” said pro-democracy legislator António Ng Kuok Cheong to local press at the peak of this gloomy period, which he described as a “civil war” in the making. “I don’t know if the police force is up to the task of stopping it,” he added in disbelief. “Where is the face of the Macau Government?” From 1995 to 1999, Major General Manuel Monge was the man in charge of security in Macau. And he did try to save face, for both him and his peers, by minimising the impact of triad warfare on the lives of common citizens. Following an execution-style triple murder in the city centre in May of 1997, he assured law-abiding men, women and children that the streets were in fact safe, because the perpetrators of the attacks were “professional killers who never miss their targets.” More than ten years later, and despite heavy criticism of this most famous statement, Mr. Monge told Macau CLOSER that he does not regret a single word he said. “We were aware that newspapers from Hong Kong were running headlines on a daily basis, reporting every single crime that occurred in Macau while at the same time hiding those committed in Hong Kong,” he explains. “And I was quite sure that the triads’ attacks on each other and against the police forces were not really affecting law-abiding citizens. So, I do not regret having said what I did. And I would do it again today,” he adds.
Cartel falls apart
At the time Mr. Monge chose this peculiar way to allay the fears of Macau’s anxious citizens, the widely publicised ratio of police forces to members of organised crime was 3 to 10. Triads were allegedly capable of amassing a ten-thousand-member army, while security forces could only count on 3,000 agents – some of them “unreliable”, to say the least.
But the underworld’s superior forces proved to be just another urban legend. When triad leaders were called to police headquarters in June of 2005 to clarify media reports of a local coalition being raised against criminal groups from Hong Kong, they claimed to have no more than 3,000 “soldiers” under their command – most likely an already quite inflated figure.
Yet the double-digit myth prevailed in the years to come, as the fabrication seemed to suit both sides. “While some police detectives tend to overstate the number of triad gangsters, in order to highlight the difficulty of fighting organised crime, the triads themselves are known to inflate their membership figures to impress rival gangs, scare the general public, and fool the security forces,” stressed a South China Morning Post report soon after Wan Kuok Koi’s trial ended without any major disruption.
But even if the number of mobsters was in fact smaller than what was publicised, there is no doubt that local triads gained the upper hand over police forces in the mid-90s after agreeing to join forces against their common enemy – the powerful Hong Kong crime sects settling in Macau in the run-up to the British colony’s handover, slated for July of 1997.
According to a secret police report released at the trial of Wan Kuok Koi, it was he who had masterminded this move towards unity among the four major triads of Macau. When questioned separately by local police officials, all of the former rival leaders openly admitted to being gang bosses and asserted the need for an anti-HK cartel, held together on the basis of fair distribution of profits from casino VIP-room operations. Apparently, it was this equal-sharing agreement that quickly led to the violent break-up of the newly formed underworld union.
“Cartels break up easily when one of the triad societies, or a leader of one of the factions, becomes so wealthy and powerful that he wants to invade the others’ territory. This is what happened in Macau,” wrote Candy Leong Veng Mei, a researcher from the Sociology Department of the University of Hong Kong, adding specifically that, “one of the leaders of the 14K became so powerful that he wanted to invade the territory of the Shui Fong. This led to a battle between the triads, and as a result, the
cartels fell apart.” She wrote that to solve the problem, in her opinion, “it would not help much to consider only anti-triad policies.” The best thing to do was to dramatically change the rules in the gambling industry, she argued, echoing what had then become a rather common perspective on the future. The days of the casino monopoly were virtually numbered.
What went wrong?
Historically, authorities in Macau tolerated triad activities under tacit agreements aimed at preserving social stability. But in the mid-90s, the Portuguese Administration “was confused with the countdown to its own end” and had lost “the authority needed to keep the delicate balances within the community,” a former Judiciary Police director told Macau CLOSER. In a subtle criticism of his successor’s handling of the crisis, Luís Mendonça de Freitas regrets that “police forces turned to some form of self-management,” pursuing “interests that had nothing to do with their mission, and which eventually were even illegal.” According to him, once the circumstances had weakened the government, “the only way to assure a peaceful transition would have been to contain triad activities within acceptable parameters.” Instead, authorities gave chase to Wan Kuok Koi and his group, leaving all their rivals unharmed. Only when this balance was broken, he says, did murders begin to occur at an uncommon rate, most of them left unpunished in what Mr. Freitas describes as a “scandal.”
Macau CLOSER tried to interview Mr. Marques Baptista about Macau’s darkest days, but he declined. After his return to Portugal, right after the Handover, he worked for Interpol in a number of European countries, and he recently retired as a public prosecutor. For security reasons, he does not reveal his whereabouts.
In the meantime, many different reasons have been presented to explain what went wrong. Professor Sonny Lo, a political analyst and long-time Macau CLOSER contributor, says “the complexities of the violence also stemmed from the triads’ overdevelopment, as well as the inability of the casino administration to curb the growth of triad forces during the rapid development of the casino industry,” and this ultimately led to a drive towards liberalisation. “The Portuguese Administration became decisive in dealing with the problem, only when it was spiralling out of control,” he adds.
Former Secretary for Security Manuel Monge complains that co-operation from China – vital to keeping the situation under control – only became effective after 1997, when Chinese officials “finally realised how dangerous the triads were.” In his opinion, two events made them change their minds. The first was the audacious kidnapping of the son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, by a gangster known as Big Spender. Second were the death threats issued against important Chinese dignitaries in Macau, including the director of the local branch of the Xinhua News Agency, Wang Qiren. “It was thanks to an old friend of mine, whose name I cannot reveal for obvious reasons, that those threats came to my knowledge and later allowed us to receive much more significant support from Chinese security officials,” Mr. Monge stresses.
But crimes remained unsolved, and former Public Prosecutor-General António Simões Redinha admits investigation efforts failed. “Even one murder left unpunished is enough to make me believe we failed,” he concedes. But when Macau CLOSER asked him to explain why the case of the attempted assassination of Manuel Apolinário was closed just two years after it happened (see following pages), Mr. Redinha said, “It’s usual to archive cases pending further evidence.” However, he also admits the victim should have been notified, “because he might have something relevant to say about it.”
António Simões Redinha (no relation to Wan Kuok Koi’s lawyer, Pedro Redinha) partially blames poor investigative results on “a regrettable political decision” to send back to Portugal, in 1997, the majority of the Portuguese public prosecutors who were working here. “The Prosecutor’s Office was beheaded,” just for the sake of appointing local magistrates to its ranks and when the challenges it faced were greater than ever, he claims. “I was so astonished with this decision, made by the Judiciary Council, that I voted against it. I never understood why prosecutors had to go while Portuguese judges were allowed to remain,” he adds.
Mr. Redinha points out that in addition to this strange decision, public prosecutors’ efforts were also hampered by triad
infiltration into their investigative arm – the Judiciary Police. A former agent who asked not to be named recalls that Police Director Marques Baptista “trusted no one” inside the enforcement agency. Inspectors were forced to leave behind their mobile phones before any anti-triad operation started, for fear of information leaks. And a case file on Wan Kuok Koi, containing only blank pages, remained on Mr. Baptista’s desk for weeks, when in fact the charges against the alleged leader of 14K had already been submitted to his superiors. For many insiders, the drive against triads was nothing more than a personal dispute between the two men.
“Wan Kuok Koi’s biggest mistake was to openly challenge the government’s authority. That could not go unpunished,” our source argues, adding, “otherwise, he would most likely still be enjoying the same strong position he held before his arrest.”
Quest for freedom
In the last ten years, Wan Kuok Koi has had plenty of time to reflect on his mistakes, and has tried to regain his freedom by different means. On August 24, 1998 – some four months after his arrest – Wan requested a meeting with Mr. Baptista, offering to help with investigations into the car bomb attack on the police director. And a few days later, on September 8, he even named someone who had allegedly planted the explosives in Mr. Baptista’s car.
According to a police transcript of the meetings obtained by Macau CLOSER, Wan informed him that powerful people, including “two from the government,” were behind the attack and promised to reveal the place where they were storing explosives for further actions. In return, he wanted Mr. Baptista to promise his quick release. But these meetings produced no clear results, as no one was ever charged with the attempt on Mr. Baptista’s life.
After being sentenced to 15 years in jail Wan appealed to a higher court, and the decision was announced a few months after the Handover. The Court of Second Instance reduced his sentence by six months. Considering his first trial illegal, Wan’s lawyer also submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, but the case was not heard, due to formal reasons.
Wan, a Portuguese-national, also planned to request transfer to Portugal, where he would serve his sentence presumably in better conditions, but he gave up on the idea after similar requests from other co-defendants were rejected.
Finally, having just completed two thirds of his jail term, he’s entitled to request freedom on parole, and he has indeed instructed his lawyer to submit the petition to the court, despite the rejection of all previous requests from other prisoners involved in organised crime.
In the high-security block of Macau’s Central Prison on Coloane Island, where he’s serving his sentence, Wan is guarded day and night by some two dozen Gurkhas, who do not speak Cantonese and have a reputation for being incorruptible. In the same building, only three other cells are occupied. Former Judiciary Police agent Arturo Calderon, Vong Tat Hou and Chan Seng Leong, also known as Superman, were all considered important members of 14K and sentenced to long terms. But the last of them will be returned to freedom in a little more than a year, leaving Wan Kuok Koi completely alone in his cell if he fails to win his parole request.
Now 53 years of age, Wan is said to be in good spirits, despite a decade of isolation from the outside world. He’s visited regularly by family members and close friends and has made some serious efforts to learn English with the help of a social care worker. He has been healthy all these years.
According to one of his advisers, Wan is “amazed” when someone shows him pictures of Macau’s most recent developments.
It’s indeed a whole new world that awaits him, sooner or later. Casinos have sprouted like mushrooms in Macau in recent years. They are making huge amounts of money now, and they are much more peaceful places. Does this mean that triads have lost all their influence in 21st century Macau? Don’t bet on that. “The criminal underworld has since adopted a low profile, understanding that any high-profile approach would bring about immediate response from both the local and Mainland Chinese governments,” says Professor Sonny Lo.
In other words, relations between the authorities and the triads have presumably returned to the old status quo, uncontested before the winds of history – and some strong characters – conspired to create chaos in Macau at the most important crossroads in the city’s past.