Vancouver Sun journalist Kim Bolan shares the tradecraft behind Lethal Exports — a five-part investigation exposing Canada’s role in transnational crime and the devastating toll it leaves across continents
The adage “think global, act local” holds dual meaning. For criminals, it’s the blueprint that has propelled small-town gangsters into billion-dollar drug empires. For journalist Kim Bolan, that same logic guided her transnational investigation — tracing key players in the Pacific meth trade back to Canadian soil.
Having chronicled Vancouver’s crime networks for decades, Bolan found her series lead in early 2023, when press releases revealed that nearly eight tonnes of methamphetamine had been intercepted between the Port of Vancouver and Australia. Determined to uncover how her knowledge of the city’s rogues’ gallery might connect to these record seizures, she followed the trail abroad.
In Australia, Bolan’s reporting archive proved invaluable. Her command of names, faces, and underworld alliances earned her trust with police and border officials, who confirmed that Khamla Wong — a fugitive she had been tracking in Vancouver whose charges had recently been stayed — was operating out of Thailand as the right-hand man of Tse Chi Lop, a drug smuggler on the scale of Mexico’s Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
While in Asia, Bolan tracked down court records linking Wong to small-time offenders whose testimonies underscored his criminal stature. Those documents became one of Bolan’s investigative lynchpins, revealing how high-level Canadian traffickers like Wong orchestrate drug exports from overseas hideouts — leveraging foot soldiers to move shipments while evading arrest.
Joined by Chris Arsenault and Levon Enns-Kutcy, Bolan breaks down the tradecraft behind her landmark series — exposing Canada’s role in the transnational drug trade and the journalistic rigor required to bring a story of this magnitude to light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Chris Arsenault: For those who haven’t read your series, particularly the piece about Khamla Wong and Tse Chi Lop, the so-called Asian El Chapo, can you briefly summarize your reporting? What did you uncover, and what was the core story you wanted to tell?
Kim Bolan: I’ve covered gangs and organized crime through a real crisis here in B.C., where we’ve had roughly two decades of gang violence, and some of the people alleged to be involved clearly had international links.
One of those stories focused on Khamla Wong, a fugitive who had been evading arrest for more than ten years. He’s no longer facing charges, but at the time law-enforcement agencies in several countries were actively searching for him.
Wong was allegedly involved in international drug shipments. As I followed his trail abroad, I found others from B.C. connected to him in Thailand and China who turned out to be pawns in his trafficking operations — some were killed, others convicted and handed harsh sentences.
In Australia, law enforcement confirmed that Wong was allegedly the right-hand man of Tse Chi Lop — the billion-dollar drug kingpin who led the Sam Gor syndicate.
Through sources, court documents, and records I obtained overseas, I verified evidence showing that Wong was still operating at large and tied to traffickers whose activities traced back to B.C. This story really showed the global reach of the organized-crime problem we have in Canada.
Chris Arsenault: Building sources with law enforcement is difficult, especially when those agencies are dealing with ongoing investigations. How did you build those international connections and get people to talk to you?
Kim Bolan: Working internationally is different — you’re going in cold. I scanned local news in each country to identify and contact potential sources, and I used some of my Canadian contacts to connect me with people they knew abroad.
Before speaking with agencies like the Australian Federal Police or Australian Border Force, I sent them some of my stories and explained what I was working on. I already had a lot of information through cold calls, referrals, and my background following people like Wong for years in Vancouver. I walked in with names, connections, and context, which made officers more willing to talk.
Once you’re discussing the same figures or organizations — dropping names both sides know — you start to build trust. That rapport is how people open up.
Chris Arsenault: How are you managing an end run on sourcing where Canadian or other law-enforcement agencies have come up short?
Kim Bolan: To pin down Wong’s location, I relied on a mix of underworld and law-enforcement sources. He stayed in touch with people in B.C. who were gang-linked or adjacent, and sometimes those conversations gave me clues about where he was moving.
I also had long-established contacts in Vancouver who would relay leads — “We’ve heard he’s in Mexico,” for example. Piecing those threads together let me build a working map of his whereabouts before verifying it overseas.
Levon Enns-Kutcy: For journalism students who might one day want to report internationally, what lessons did you learn about navigating those challenges, practically and ethically?
Kim Bolan: You need to be sensitive to the laws, cultures, and languages in other countries, and you can’t be dismissive of how things work elsewhere. I probably shared more about the story I hoped to produce than I normally would in Canada, to help law enforcement understand why I was asking certain questions.
In Australia and New Zealand, authorities usually don’t release the names of suspects even after charges are laid. I had to be clear that I was reporting for a Canadian audience, where those laws don’t apply. That transparency helped me access names and details from people who otherwise wouldn’t have gone on the record.
There’s also been an erosion of trust in journalism. If I use an unnamed source, it’s only for a specific detail — for the bigger picture, I always do the legwork to get someone on the record or verify information through documents.
Chris Arsenault: Did you map out the big picture from the start, or did it take shape as the investigation evolved? And when it came to organizing your reporting — the interviews, leads, and data — how did you manage it across countries?
Kim Bolan: I didn’t always know what I would get or where I’d end up, and that was stressful. Before I even made my pitch, I knew about the large volume of methamphetamine seized at the Port of Vancouver going to Australia. I remember thinking, Who’s doing this? That was the story I wanted to track.
As I travelled, I stayed in touch with my editors and kept transcribing and organizing interviews as I went. Sometimes when you’re reporting abroad, you have to file from the field, and when you’re filing on the road, you don’t overthink it — you just get it done.
When I returned, I fit the material into the story where it belonged. There were still holes to fill, and I found people I could interview in Canada before the series had to run. Organizationally, record everything but be selective about what actually serves your story.
Chris Arsenault: How did you deal with getting Thai court records? How did you find that needle in the haystack?
Kim Bolan: The case of Blair Stephens — a Canadian convicted in Thailand and sentenced to life for working with Wong — didn’t get much coverage locally. Stories that would be huge here weren’t news there.
I’d heard about the ruling from sources I’d built over the years. Before travelling, I reached out to the people who mentioned it: Is this something? Who do I talk to? Where do I access the documents?
Once I got the record, I had it translated in Vancouver. It confirmed that Wong had contacted Stephens to pick up a FedEx parcel containing heroin, and that Stephens told investigators Wong was behind other smuggling ventures in the region. It was an important piece of verification.
Chris Arsenault: Court documents and courthouse legwork can overwhelm young reporters. What advice would you give about the tradecraft involved?
Kim Bolan: Start small and learn how to work the system. Figure out how to get indictments from your local court registry, and don’t be afraid to challenge publication bans — you don’t need a lawyer to do that.
If something is being withheld, ask for the exhibits — documents, photographs, recordings, or physical evidence submitted during a trial. Those materials help you tell a deeper story.
Simple tradecraft still matters. If police say something happened “near” an address, go there and find the exact location. Once you have that, you can look up property records and start connecting dots. I keep files like that for years because when someone is eventually charged, you’ve already built the background. And databases like CanLII help you track where a person’s name shows up — even if they weren’t charged, they might appear as a witness in another case.
This project is supported by the Michener–O’Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education.