Construction workers in Hong Kong take a break during a heat wave in May.PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images
Hong Kong’s triads – crime syndicates – have been linked to everything from bank robberies and extortion to drug trafficking and money-laundering.
No one can accuse the secretive criminal gangs of failing to diversify, going so far, police revealed this week, as to use violence and arson to corner the market for selling lunch boxes to construction workers.
At a news conference Monday, officers from the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau said a number of large residential projects currently under construction in East Kowloon had created a significant demand for takeout meals.
“Since the construction site meal business provides a stable and continuous income, it attracted a triad active in Kowloon,” Acting Senior Superintendent Au Yeung Tak told reporters.
“This gang attempted to use illegal and violent means to intervene in and monopolize this business.”
As well as the lunch box trade, the same gang was involved in illegal gambling and extorting a number of hair salons, Mr. Au said.
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In March, the police launched an undercover operation, deploying detectives to infiltrate various construction sites. Late last week, they raided a number of locations, including an unlicensed food manufacturing plant, four unlicensed hawker stalls and six illegal gambling dens controlled by the triad.
In total, 125 people were arrested, including 48 men and 77 women, aged between 22 and 81. They are accused of a variety of crimes, including extortion, criminal intimidation, vandalism, money-laundering and operating an unlicensed restaurant.
During the operation, police seized around HK$4-million ($725,000) worth of various items, including cash, luxury watches and two trucks worth HK$600,000 ($108,000) that were used to transport lunch boxes.
Chief Inspector Yam Suet-ying said the triad had begun taking over the lunch box trade by harassing and intimidating food delivery workers to monopolize the various building sites.
“Operating in a vertically integrated manner, from an unlicensed food manufacturing plant, they produced, transported and sold lunch boxes to construction workers,” she said.
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Located in a tin shed in Sai Kung district, in northeastern Hong Kong, the plant churned out about 800 lunch boxes a day, which were sold for HK$50 ($9) a box, netting the triad almost HK$1-million ($181,000) a month in revenue, Ms. Yam added.
“Local staff were hired to cook with ingredients of unknown origin in unsanitary conditions, and the lunch boxes were then transported to hawker stalls outside construction sites in East Kowloon.”
At one point, undercover police officers posing as vendors selling lunch boxes outside a construction site “were harassed and intimidated by triad members, who damaged the lunch boxes being sold.”
Some vendors not linked to the gang were allowed by the triad to keep selling, but only if they paid “protection money,” Mr. Au said. This system eventually netted the alleged mastermind of the operation, who was arrested Friday by undercover officers when he visited them to collect his latest extortion payment.
As recently as the 1990s, various triads were reported to have as many as 160,000 members and supporters in Hong Kong, but this number is believed to have fallen significantly in the decades since, and many organized crime groups now keep a low profile in the territory, focusing on transnational crime, including the drug trade, online scams and money laundering.
According to Hong Kong police, of the nearly 90,000 crimes recorded in the territory last year, 1,944 were triad-related, or around 2 per cent. Most incidents involved illegal gambling, drugs and the sex trade.
During a major operation alongside police in Macao and mainland China in 2025, police said they arrested more than 4,000 alleged triad members and seized cash and drugs worth approximately HK$550-million ($100-million).