Short answers, pulled from the story.
Organized crime refers to transnational, national, or local groups of centralized enterprises that engage in illegal activities, most commonly for profit. In the United States, the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 defines it as the unlawful activities of a highly organized, disciplined association. Criminal activity conducted as a structured process is legally referred to as racketeering.
UK police estimate that organized crime involves up to 38,000 people operating across approximately 6,000 separate groups.
Tse Chi Lop is a Chinese-Canadian gangster born in Guangzhou, China, who is understood to head Sam Gor, also known as The Company, the most prominent international crime syndicate in the Asia-Pacific region. Sam Gor is made up of members of five triads, earns at least $8 billion per year primarily from drug trafficking, and is alleged to control 40% of the Asia-Pacific methamphetamine market. In 1998, Tse was convicted of transporting heroin into the United States and served nine years.
Money laundering is the process by which criminal groups convert illegally obtained funds into assets that appear legitimate, typically through three stages: placement, layering, and integration. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that in 2009 money laundering equaled roughly 2.7% of global GDP, approximately 1.6 trillion US dollars.
Organized crime predates the modern era by centuries. The word "thug" traces back to early 13th-century India, and in Ancient Rome an outlaw named Bulla Felix led a gang of up to six hundred bandits. In the United States, historians Brian J. Robb and Erin H. Turner identified the first organized crime syndicates as the Cochise Cowboy Gang and the Wild Bunch of the Old West.
Al Capone became a notorious example of how tax evasion intersects with organized crime. In 1931, he was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $215,000 in back taxes along with accrued interest, demonstrating that financial crimes rather than violent ones led to his conviction.