The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that a Chinese organization that has secretly exported fentanyl, called “zombie drugs,” to the United States is believed to have been based in Japan. On the 26th, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that it was confirmed that “Hubay Amabel Biotech” (hereinafter referred to as Amabel), a Chinese company related to fentanyl smuggling, and “FIRSKY Co., Ltd., a corporation based in Nagoya, Japan, were connected in human and physical terms.
Amabel executives, a chemical product company in Wuhan, Hubei Province, were found guilty in January this year in a federal court in New York on charges of illegally importing fentanyl materials into the United States. Nikkei said it has found that there is a “Japanese boss” who invested in Amabel after examining data from U.S. trials. Regarding this person, he explained that Nikkei is a man believed to be of Chinese nationality, and that he lives in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan on social media. “He is a shareholder of 18 companies, including Japan, China, and the United States, and is a shareholder and CEO of FIRSKY.”
The U.S. authorities are pursuing the person at the heart of the issue, but they do not yet know where he is. The newspaper also said that the auditor, who retired in July last year from the Wuhan subsidiary, which FIRSKY said was 100% invested in, and the name of an Amabel executive convicted of fentanyl-related charges in the U.S., are the same. However, the newspaper added that the FIRSKY sales representative used the user’s name on social networking services (SNS) like the Amabel-related company and posted a picture of the factory on its website. Earlier, FIRSKY was suddenly liquidated in July last year, when Amabel-related trials were underway. Nikkei said that after European investigators verified the results of the report, “Amabel and FIRSKY can be said to be the same organization.” A person who worked for a Mexican drug trafficking organization told Nikkei, “Japan is easy for foreigners to come and go, so it is the best place to use it as a base for smuggling (drugs).” “FIRSKY sold Amabel’s drugs on a specialized website and traded the payment in virtual currency,” Nikkei said, pointing out that a key figure may have ordered the delivery and fund management of dangerous drugs in Japan until at least July last year, when FIRSKY closed. “Until now, Japan has not been pointed out that it has anything to do with fentanyl fraud, but if it was one of the distribution channels, the situation would be very different,” he observed.
Meanwhile, fentanyl abuse has become a serious social problem in the U.S., and U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs of 20 to 25 percent on China, Canada and Mexico, citing the influx of fentanyl. “It turns out that the Amazon executive has been building a network of fentanyl smuggling in multiple countries, including Mexico,” Nikkei said. “Japan may have been at the forefront of the fentanyl crisis, which caused confrontation between the U.S. and China, and problems that caused global friction, such as trade wars, may affect Japan.”
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
