A newspaper clipping showing the area near the junction of Singapore's Bras Basah and North Bridge Road, where an attack on Oct. 24, 1969 le


By Joe Brock
and John Geddie
May 26, 2020

Tan ran a restaurant in Copenhagen but moved to Cambodia after being shot by his Vietnamese bodyguard in 2009

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Early one October morning in 1969, Singapore police officers found the body of a man dumped in a storm drain. He had been stabbed to death, police said, in what became one of the country's most notorious gang killings.

Tan was 72, and also known as Roland Tan, or by his aliases - "Mr. Big" and "The Hainanese Kid". He was once one of Singapore's most storied fugitives and went on to run a powerful European drug trafficking syndicate out of Amsterdam, according to two former Singapore police detectives and media reports.

Singapore's gang culture was derived from "secret societies" formed by Chinese settlers in Southeast Asia in the 1800s, said Jean Abshire, a U.S.-based academic who authored 'The History of Singapore'.

But some of those old enough to remember when mob culture thrived in Singapore in the years before and after the island gained independence from Britain in 1965 cautioned against romanticising the past. "When I was young, I have witnessed a guy going round every hawker stall collecting money. We should never take our safe and mafia free country for granted," said commenter Wilfred Lee.

Tan's funeral in Copenhagen on April 24 was attended by members of the Hell's Angels, pictures show. It was streamed on a private Facebook page that is followed by hundreds of family members and well-wishers - many from Singapore - who would not have been able to travel to Denmark due to coronavirus lockdowns.


full https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sing ... SKBN23207I