It was in the dark days following the end of the second world war that the 'Dutch connection' was formed.
Triad members who left Hong Kong's New Territories for the Netherlands realised there were easier ways of making money than demanding protection money and peddling opium to Chinese communities around the port city of Rotterdam and the capital, Amsterdam.
By the 1960s, just as heroin addiction was exploding across the globe, these Chinese Dutch gangsters began using business partnerships forged with their loosely affiliated brethren in Hong Kong that would eventually see billions of dollars worth of heroin and other drugs smuggled through the nation with Europe's biggest port.
From the Netherlands, the junkies' favourite China White No4 heroin, manufactured in Hong Kong, could be transported anywhere in Europe, Britain, or the United States.
The seizure last week of a record 372kg of cocaine in a New Territories village house - and the fact a Dutch Chinese drug dealer is missing - suggests the connection is as strong now as it was more than 40 years ago.
With one important difference.
The drugs are just as likely to be coming from the Netherlands into Hong Kong as they are going the opposite direction.
