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.