Malaysian passports sell like hot cakes in Bangkok
Malaysian passports sell like hot cakes in Bangkok
By Kim Gooi
KUALA KEDAH, Malaysia (DPA): When Ng Leong Huat applied for a passport in 1992 he had no idea of the trouble he was getting himself into.
In the middle of last year he was hauled in by Malaysian special branch police, stripped to his underpants and interrogated for two days non-stop in Alor Star, the capital of Kedah State bordering Thailand.
Ng, who comes from the fishing village of Kuala Kedah, had to get several of his ex-employers in his home town to testify on his behalf that he was not the leader of an international counterfeiting gang operating out of North Korea, Bangkok and Phnom Penh.
"I have never been out of the country. How can I be member of an international gang?" asked Ng, when interviewed recently by the German Press Agency (DPA).
Luckily for him, the police believed his story and let him go but Ng will not be able to get another passport for a long time.
Under the country's tough security law, passed to stem rampant illegal sales of Malaysian passports to foreign gangs, anyone who loses his passport will have to wait for at least five years before he can apply for a new one.
Thousands of Malaysian passports have been reported lost or stolen in recent years. Most of them end up in Bangkok where they are sold to illegal Chinese immigrants heading for North America, Europe, Korea or Japan.
U.S. Immigration Naturalization Service officials in Thailand claim Bangkok is the regional hub for a huge fake-passport racket.
Highly skilled Bangkok syndicates with sophisticated equipment replace the original photographs with those of the illegal holders. Illegal Chinese immigrants can easily pass themselves off as Malaysians because of the large Sino-Malaysian community. The going price for a fake passport in Bangkok is US$2,000-3,000, sources said.
Of late, a more worrisome problem besetting Malaysian authorities has been the large numbers of blank passports stolen from government offices, turning up in Bangkok for sale at $6,000-8,000 per document.
In February this year some 120 passports were stolen from the Ipoh (Perak State) immigration office, Malaysian newspapers reported. Sources said thousands had been stolen from Sabah State in East Malaysia, and a prominent Dato' (a royal bestowed title) had been implicated with the illegal sale of passports to foreigners.
Brand new blank Malaysian passports are the most expensive in the illegal passport market of Bangkok.
They cost three to four times more than the usual fake passports where the photograph is tampered with and the illegal immigrant travels in the name of the original holder.
Ng Leong Huat's passport ended up in the hands of a North Korean leader of a counterfeiting gang who was masquerading as a Malaysian-Chinese businessman in Phnom Penh.
Traced investigations into thousands of fake U.S. dollars flooding Thailand and Cambodia last year led agents to a gang headed by Ng Leong Huat and the notorious Japanese Red Army member Yoshimi Tanaka, who hijacked a Japan Airlines plane to North Korea in 1970.
A year ago Tanaka was arrested in Cambodia with two north Korean diplomats. The diplomats were released but Tanaka was extradited to Thailand. He is in Chonburi prison undergoing trial for counterfeiting money. "Ng Leong Huat" escaped back to North Korea.
With a photocopy of Ng Leong Huat's passport obtained in Phnom Penh, DPA was able to trace the real Ng Leong Huat to his home town of Kuala Kedah.
While many criminals have been able to obtain and travel with Malaysian passport that have been tampered with, the North Koreans had apparently gone one step further by getting a passport whose original holder looked exactly like their agent.
Cambodian immigration officers testified Ng's passport was completely genuine, untampered and officially issued by the Malaysian authority. This had led investigators to believe that the leader of the counterfeit gang was a Malaysian.
The case of Ng Leong Huat's passport revealed for the first time the sophisticated methods of the North Korean agents who, via contacts with the Chinese network in Bangkok, had managed to get the best Malaysian passport money could buy.
Operating out of Cambodia where Malaysians are given free visa entry and unlimited stay, because of North Korea's special relations with King Norodom Sihanouk, would be the natural choice for the incognito gang, especially for disposing of counterfeit dollars.