A DRUG kingpin dubbed "China's El Chapo" is supplying the world with up to 13.1 billion worth of crystal meth every year, the United Nations has said.

Tse Chi Lop, 55, head of cartel Sam Gor, now controls at least 40 per cent of Asia's regional market, which has seen a huge spike in demand for the drug in recent years.

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The boom has triggered a huge counter-narcotics investigation, Operation Kungur, with Sam Gor and Tse Chi Lop as its prime targets, Reuters reports.

The operation, led by the Australian Federal Police, involves 20 law enforcement agencies from countries including Myanmar, China, Thailand, Japan, the United States, and Canada.

It is the biggest ever international effort to combat drug trafficking in Asia.

Crystal meth is a potent psychoactive substance used as a recreational drug throughout the world.

Used consistently, it can induce mood swings, psychosis, muscle breakdown, and seizures.

Sam Gor is thought to being selling the drug into at least a dozen countries across Asia, from Japan in the north to New Zealand in the South Pacific.

Drugs are shipped in containers marked as tea, strapped to the bodies of couriers on commercial flights, or carried in rucksacks by hikers on the jungle paths between Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.

Lop, currently Asia's most-wanted man, was born in China, but moved to Canada in 1988 and is now a Canadian citizen.

He was arrested in 1998 for importing heroin into the US, but succeeded in having a life sentence reduced to just nine years, and was ultimately released in 2006.

It is reported that he travels by private jet, has a personal guard of Thai kickboxers, and once lost $66 million (51 million) in one night at a Macau casino.

Officials have said Sam Gor is in many ways far more sophisticated than any of the more notorious Latin American drugs gangs.

It supplies a larger and wider-spread market and collaborates with a broader range of other organisations, including Japan's Yakuza syndicates, Australia's biker gangs, and Chinese gangs operating across Southeast Asia.

It is also said to be less prone to outbreaks of internal conflict.

Tse Chi Lop is in the league of El Chapo or maybe Pablo Escobar, Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and Pacific representative for United Nations on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters.

The word kingpin often gets thrown around, but there is no doubt it applies here.

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One veteran Western anti-narcotics official added: The crime groups in Southeast Asia and the Far East operate with seamless efficiency.

"They function like a global corporation."

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Chinas El Chapo is flooding the world with crystal meth via Asian cartel which makes $17billion a yea - The Sun