CHASING THE DRAGON IN DRUG UNDERWORLD

It started with the biggest heroin bust in United States history - and ended
nine years later at the doorstep of a short, balding Auckland businessman.

The case against Hing Hung Wong has all the elements of a classic crime
novel, with huge drug shipments, bugged phone calls, secret witnesses and
millions of dollars in laundered cash.

But even a crime novelist would have been proud to invent the name Mad Six,
the nom-de-plume of the drug lord said to have drawn Wong into his inner
circle.

Yesterday the US failed in its five-month bid to have Wong extradited on
charges of supplying and possessing heroin, which the 37-year-old denied.
Now Hong Kong authorities want him extradited there.

According to US legal and media files, Wong's story started in earnest on
May 20, 1991, at the port of Oakland, California.

Among freight being unloaded from the ship President Truman that day were
more than 2500 cartons of plastic bags. Working on a hunch, customs officers
found that 59 of the cartons held a total of 486kg of heroin - the
second-biggest shipment ever recorded.

Officers seized some of the shipment and followed the rest to a warehouse in
Hayward, California. Seventy officers packing guns and combat armour
launched a five-week stakeout.

Eventually they videotaped two members of a wealthy Taiwanese family looking
for the missing drugs. "This is devastating," the woman was taped saying.
"It is impossible," said the man.

Police busted the family and broke the story to media as law officials leapt
in to claim credit.

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, Robert
Bender, said: "Law enforcement has ripped the heart out of a very
significant organisation. We've cut the head of the dragon off."

But officers soon suspected that the dragon had merely lost its tail. They
found that the family had received 12 shipments of furniture, plastic bags
and porcelain from Asia since 1989 and uncovered evidence of up to $500,000
at a time moving between bank accounts. They decided they had busted only
the shipping "cell" of a drug cartel where most players knew little about
the rest of the operation.

Wong's alleged role started to emerge in 1995, when police uncovered New
York heroin dealer Matthew Lo. Lo said he was recruited into the drug trade
by a childhood friend of an important Thai dealer called Ah Dee - whom
authorities claim was actually Hing Hung Wong. In a signed statement to US
authorities, Lo claimed Ah Dee smuggled "a very large shipment" to
California in 1991 or 1992, organised a 140kg load into New York in 1994 and
later ordered the sale of 700g "units" of heroin for about $US60,000 each.
In 1995 he had tried to ship 70kg of heroin into the US.

Detectives were yet to link the name Ah Dee to Wong. But agents found a
mystery witness in a foreign jail who said a voice on tapped phone calls
belonged to Ah Dee - and that the voice matched a photograph of Wong.

The witness, nicknamed John Doe, said: "From my dealings with Wong I know he
has used violence or threats of violence."

Doe signed a statement which gives the only known insight into the inner
workings of the alleged heroin cartel. He said he met Wong in the early
1980s when they both worked for a man called Dai Wah Szeto, or Mad Six,
whose gangsters shipped drugs "around the world." Doe's role, he maintained,
was to move tens of millions of dollars from Europe and the US through
accounts in Hong Kong to Mad Six in Thailand.

"During the time I worked for Mad Six, [Wong] became more trusted,
eventually becoming his second-in-command," Doe said. "[Wong] was
particularly responsible for overseeing the organisation's shipment of
heroin to the US."

Wong allegedly shipped three loads to the US that Doe could remember,
including an "enormous" amount to San Francisco in 1991. Doe said Wong told
him to meet the shipment in California, but aborted the operation when the
heroin was seized.

The photographs of Wong that US agents showed Doe in prison were taken by
Hong Kong police in 1985. They alleged they busted Wong with two packets of
white powder found in his taxi and bedroom, and that he escaped on a fake
passport.

Exactly how US authorities tracked Wong to New Zealand is unclear, but by
last December Auckland police were watching a man involved with a Queen St
business who matched their description.

Hing Hung Wong was arrested on January 28.

An Auckland detective said he had lived in New Zealand on a Thai passport
since November 1998, and was thought to have stayed in Atkin Ave, Mission
Bay. He used eight aliases while on the run.

Wong was jailed - but not for long. Within days he obtained cash from
associates overseas and hired top defence lawyer John Haigh, QC, who got
Wong freed on what may be the strictest bail conditions ever seen in New
Zealand.

He had to live in a secret city apartment, pay $100,000 for a security
anklet and two guards to watch him 24 hours a day, was denied access to a
cellphone, and had to meet a host of other conditions.

Residents of the building were outraged, but Wong was allowed to stay even
after Hong Kong police ordered his arrest for the 1985 charges.

Wong wore a seemingly inexhaustible supply of colourful suits to the court
hearings, and rarely spoke to anyone except a small knot of friends. One,
who never gave his name, told the Herald that he owed Wong his freedom and
felt strong loyalty.

The man said he had been falsely accused of kidnapping and thrown in a Thai
jail for six months. Wong, whom he barely knew at the time, used his links
in the police and military to have the man released.

Judge Robert Kerr found that there would have been enough evidence to
extradite Wong had the US properly authenticated its papers. The US had
initially sought extradition on three heroin charges, but dropped the third
for lack of evidence.

Judge Kerr dismissed the first charge for various reasons and the second
because only two of about 10 affidavits had been properly certified by a US
government official.

Wong's future in New Zealand is still uncertain. He faces the Hong Kong
extradition hearings in October, and the US may yet appeal yesterday's
decision.