Vietnamese People in The Czech Republic - Criminal Activities

Criminal Activities

In some regions, such as Northern Bohemia, the Vietnamese people are leading the statistics of crimes committed by foreigners, being second only to Romanies from Slovakia. When it comes to drugs related crimes, Vietnamese are leading nationwide criminal statistics.

Vietnamese criminal gangs in the Czech Republic usually have a three-level structure. The kingpin is usually a well-established man, who came to the country as a student in 1980s. The second level consists of his close friends from studies or family members, while the third level comprises "soldiers", who are often in the country illegally and are fully dependent on the criminal organization.

Criminal activities of Vietnamese gangs in the country consist mainly of tax evasion, infringement of intellectual property rights, smuggling and frauds, but include also racketeering, robbery and murders.

While traditionally specializing in counterfeit goods, during the 2000s Vietnamese people dominated the production and sale of illegal drugs, especially marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin, in many regions of the Czech Republic. These drugs are often made for export to Germany, Poland, Austria and Italy, as the domestic market is limited due to the possibility of Czechs to grow cannabis for their own purposes legally. In 2011 alone, the police arrested almost two hundred criminals of Vietnamese origin on drug-related charges. Unlike their local competition, mostly of Balkan or Romani origin, the Vietnamese drug lords cooperate with each other, which makes their criminal activities that much harder to uncover. Also, when dealing with wire tapping, the police has to rely on translators, some of whom were uncovered as giving information to the Vietnamese drug lords. Vietnamese gangs use a variety of devices to protect the drug production facilities, including improvised explosive devices, venetian blinds connected to electricity or trapdoors with bayonets. During one of the busts, the police even found a slave gardener who was sealed within the marijuana production facility, forced to care for 5,800 cannabis plants.

Dramatic rise in metamphetamine use in the neighboring Bavaria and Sachsen led in 2013 to German pressure for change of Czech drug laws, under which for example up two grams of metamphetamine or up to fifteen grams of mariujana are not a criminal offense. According to the German authorities, the high legal threshold allows easy purchase for German drug users. However, Czech addiction experts refused lowering of the threshold, saying, that this would merely lead to criminalization of addicts and would not solve the issue. Instead, Czech authorities intensified international cooperation and investigation.

In April 2013, the Czech Republic and Vietnam announced a new bilateral treaty, under which policemen from Vietnam were to join Czech teams fighting Vietnamese drug mafia, while convicted Vietnamese were to be repatriated to the home country and serve their sentences there.