THE UNDERGROUND EMPIRE Where Crime and Governments Embrace

Hardback. 1st UK Edn. The author reveals the existence of an empire so powerful and wealthy that world stability itself is threatened. Formed by secret alliances between governments and criminal groups it is an empire engaging massively in every crime conceivable - including murder, kidnapping, subversion, but chiefly in narcotics trafficking. It has annual revenues which place it above all but the top six major industrial nations. Its drugs exports from Columbia and Mexico alone represents 75% of those countries' total export revenues. Making it all possible are the leaders and high officials of the drug-producing countries, who often are themselves the drug traffickers. For over 5yrs the author worked from the inside of Centac, a United States government agency, set up to smash the major multinational drug networks. He had full access to Centac personnel and documentation, and travelled in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, working with hundreds of people - agents, prosecutors, informants and, in many cases, the criminals themselves. Revealing true identities throughout, the author centres his narrative on three kings of the empire : Alberto Sicilia-Falcon, a homicidal, homosexual, devil-worshipping Cuban, ruler of the Mexican drug trade; Donald Steinberg, a charming young American entrepreneur who, at the age of 30, was earning a million dollars a day from marijuana; and Lu Hsu-Shui, a reclusive Chinese, responsible for most of the heroin trade from South-east Asia. These men dealt at the highest levels, even with presidents of nations, and they had the financial power to buy their own armies, diplomats, intelligence services, banks, merchant fleets and airlines. A book which leaves governments in no doubt of their failure to make any impression on the alarming increase in this deadly trade of drug trafficking. A disturbing, but stunning document. 1165pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. F. in Nr. F. dw. A heavy book at just under 2kg, so will require additional postage, domestic and overseas.