6

The Mercenaries

2007–2009 . . . Lachlan McConnell and the gold . . . Dave Smith and a history of violence . . . Felix Klaussen finds a job . . . The life of a Le Roux mercenary

For Paul Le Roux, Hong Kong’s glittering metropolis offered the perfect hub through which to transit—and transform— hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds. As a global fi- nancial nerve center, it was the perfect place to change his virtual cash into something more tangible, obscuring its origins. The quasi- independent Chinese city had a reputation for looking the other way when it came to cleaning money. Under Hong Kong’s lax regu- lations, Le Roux could set up an endless number of corporate shells through which to funnel the money he was extracting from the pock- ets of American drug consumers.

Lachlan McConnell, a fifty-year-old Canadian with thinning hair and a résumé lined with security jobs, often found himself at the terminus of Le Roux’s river of cash. As one of Le Roux’s em- ployees on the ground in Hong Kong, he was responsible for what those in his line of work called “asset protection.” “It seemed like a constant stream of money coming in from the U.S.,” he re- called. “Money turned into gold.” Hundreds of bars of gold. Thousands of pounds of gold. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of