The Daily Surprise

Interpol has just completed the task of listing how many street gangs there are in South East Asia - Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines, Malaysia and Singapore. The results are frightening: there are more than 10,000. Some of them have up to 1,000 members. This means on any given day and night, several thousand gang members are roaming the cities of these countries, many of them thirsting for violence.

The gangs' main activities in this region include drug trafficking, contract murder, protection money, money laundering, gambling, prostitution, car theft, extortion, and other forms of racketeering.

In recent years, counterfeiting of intellectual property such as computer software, music CDs and movie DVDs have become a major source of gang income.

Meet, whom most would consider the prince of street gangs. He is the man with one thousand faces - Genesan V, also called, "G Hippy Hop" in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. In Thailand, he is referred to as "Khemkhaeng" which means strength in Thai. The Philipinos call him "Bayani", which means hero in Tagalog.

Genesan, now merely 19 years old, is the de facto head of over 30 separate street gangs from Jakarta in Indonesia, to Bangkok in Thailand.

An ethnic Indian by birth, but speaks approximately 7 regional languages including Tamil, Malay, Cantonese, Hokkian, Thai and Tagalog, Genesan has a knack for controlling his gangs by proxy - he uses ethnic Chinese, Malays, Thais and Philipinos as his "generals".

An ex gang member says, "G Hippy Hop is a survivor, people respect him, they like him...he can sit with you and talk your language then, when the phone rings he will speak in another language. Sometimes in one table there will be 3 races all speaking different languages and G Hippy Hop will easily talk to them like there is no barrier"

At the tender age of 12 years old, Genesan was already proficient at controlling a gang of 10 boys who extorted money from the younger boys in school. They also managed a betting syndicate in their territory.

He has since diversified into many different criminal activities which he disguise with legitimate businesses to fool the authorities.

Having dropped out of school at age 15, Genesan had no conventional skills to rely on to earn a living except his street smarts and fearlessness - being a gang member is a natural progression for children like him.

"This is the life I chose, this is the way of my life. In [the gangs] you must be a leader - you must use your brains, think of what to do and you must have the balls to do it. Talking is not balls, you don't need balls to talk; you need balls to do things", advises Genesan.

It is believed that Genesan is now a multi millionaire owning several legitimate businesses and real estate in the region which include restaurants, night spots, budget hotels and transportation companies.

Every year, without fail, Genesan gives large sums of money to charities . No one knows for sure if he does this to genuinely help the poor, or because he wants some kind of absolve from his sins.

Last year alone, it is reported that he donated close to $2 million to various charitable causes.

"What I make, I also give some to others. Thats how the world goes - everyone must die one day. You can think of me as the Bill Gates of the criminal world", he explains.

Some observers say that this maybe the reason the authorities have not been hard on him over the years. Others, however, add that he knows how to "take care of" people - and in turn, people take care of him.

At the end of the interview, he invited us to go with him on a fishing trip on his yacht - we smiled and politely declined his offer; we do not know who he meant was going to be the fish...