China says US tip led to suspect in ‘prime example’ of cooperation amid fentanyl crisis
- Man surnamed Tong detained on drugs and money laundering charges; Beijing insists opioid crisis is not ‘caused by China’
Anti-narcotics cooperation between China and the US must be based on mutual respect and trust, rather than “fiction, exaggeration and overinterpretation”, a Chinese narcotics control officer said on Wednesday.
The comments came after Chinese authorities detained a suspect allegedly involved in drug-related money laundering in the US.
Following a tip-off from the US, Chinese police detained a suspect surnamed Tong for allegedly taking part in “illegal foreign exchange transactions”, state news agency Xinhua reported.
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Tong allegedly opened a car showroom in the United States in 2017 and offered currency exchange services to his customers. The operation later “evolved into criminal activities” that included the illegal trade of foreign exchange, Xinhua quoted China’s Ministry of Public Security as saying.
The ministry, which oversees all the country’s law enforcement officers, called the case a “prime example of recent China-US anti-drug cooperation”.
Wei Xiaojun, director of the ministry’s Narcotics Control Bureau, said the US investigation into the case began in 2019, but Beijing was only notified in April.
According to a US federal indictment, Tong, 27, was linked to underground banks that spanned China, the US and Mexico.
But Wei said this could not be confirmed.
