If all goes to plan, the successful extradition from the Netherlands of alleged drug lord Tse Chi Lop is expected to yield an extraordinary insight into the complex supply chain which feeds illicit drugs to Australia.
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The federal Attorney-General's Department, which is liaising with Dutch authorities to facilitate the extradition is, as expected, saying very little.
"Mr Tse is currently in custody in the Netherlands," the department responded when detail was requested.
"The Australian government does not comment in detail on individual extradition proceedings, in order to respect individual privacy and confidentiality of government-to-government communications, and to avoid prejudicing legal proceedings."
But Tse Chi Lop is now so famous, he has his own comprehensive Wikipedia page.
He allegedly ran an international supersyndicate known as the Company, which was in turn linked to one of the biggest triads in Asia, known as the Big Circle Gang, with a base in Vancouver.
Born in China, Tse Chi Lop emigrated to Canada and worked as a go-between, facilitating the importation of drugs into the US with the infamous Rizzuto crime family.
He was arrested for heroin importation into the US and served nine years in prison, but upon his arrest in the late 1990s appeared to have been elevated in syndicate status.
Tse is also regarded as one of the key players in the Sam Gor syndicate, an international group which encompassed five triads and is alleged to be responsible for annually shifting around $22 billion worth of drugs - mostly synthetics such as methamphetamine and fentanyl - out of Asia's "Golden Triangle" into lucrative markets like Australia.
While cocaine links back to the South American suppliers and Mexican cartels, the synthetics which end up here have their production and distribution basis in Asia.
While the AFP has managed to leverage a massive amount of intelligence - more than 20 million messages over several years - as a result of its Operation Ironside phone app tap, the nature of the industrial production network within countries like Myanmar is not fully understood.
What is suspected is that the raw materials, such pseudoephedrine, are skimmed off China's enormous pharmaceutical and chemical industry and then fed into the illicit production pipeline.
Tse, given the level of his power in the Company, would be privy to those details.
