'Broken Tooth', a mafia boss in the advisory body of Chinese politics

Power in Beijing's autocracy is personalized to the extreme in the figure of the omnipresent President Xi Jinping, who relies on a Politburo made up only of seven veteran leaders of the Communist Party.. This is the hard core of the second world power. Those who rule. But their decisions are greatly influenced by the advice that comes from the country's largest advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which meets once a year.

This body is made up of the most brilliant local government officials. But also by the richest businessmen, intellectuals, great scientists and even several national celebrities, such as actors or athletes.. Highlights include former NBA star Yao Ming, writer and Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, and performers such as Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen.

The group of political advisors is quite diverse. Even in the annual photo, one of the historical great bosses of the Chinese mafias appears, now an important businessman with a lot of hand, especially in the casinos of Macau.

Wan Kuok-koi, known by his nickname Broken Tooth, spent 14 years behind bars for murder, car bombing, weapons smuggling, money laundering, human trafficking, extortion, bribery and leading a criminal organization.

He led a faction of the 14K triad in Macau, described by the United States Government as a “global criminal conglomerate”, one of the largest Chinese mafias, with tentacles all over the world.

Wan (68 years old) was released from prison in 2012 and resumed his underworld contacts to continue pulling the strings of the game in the former Portuguese colony.. Instead, in the public sphere, he managed to persuade politicians and local media by presenting himself as a respectable businessman.

He made his way as one of the visionary Asian pioneers in investing in cryptocurrencies, founding a Malaysia-based investment fund and an international cooperation association that assists the Chinese Government in its initiatives under the new Silk Road project.

But several journalistic investigations carried out in Southeast Asia have uncovered the former gangster's current links with the region's usual source of synthetic drugs, the Golden Triangle, a term coined years ago by the US Central Intelligence Agency to refer to the border area between Thailand, Laos and Burma where local militias are dedicated to producing mainly methamphetamine and heroin.

Four years ago, amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, the US Treasury Department placed Wan on its blacklist of people sanctioned for being a “corrupt actor” and a “threat to global order.”. In addition to listing all the crimes for which he served time in Macau, the US department recalled in its report that Wan is one of the notable members of the Consultative Conference, stretching the black legend about the Chinese Government's connections with the triads.

In contrast, China's main advisory body also has some senior officials from the Ministry of Public Security, in charge of the police forces, which this week revealed that in 2023 successful operations against mafias were carried out, arresting 27,000 suspects. and dismantling 1,900 criminal organizations.