Khun Sa
In 1988, Khun Sa was interviewed by Australian journalist Stephen Rice, who had crossed the border from Thailand into Burma illegally. Khun Sa offered to sell his entire heroin crop to the Australian Government for A$50m a year (paid in either cash or agricultural aid) for the next eight years, a move that would have immediately destroyed half the world's heroin supply. The Australian Government rejected the offer, with Senator Gareth Evans declaring: "The Australian Government is simply not in the business of paying criminals to refrain from criminal activity." In September 1989, when American photojournalist Karen Petersen interviewed the General for "People" magazine at his camp in Ner Mone, Shan State, he claimed he had a total army of 12,000 men. Soon thereafter, in January 1990 Khun Sa was indicted in absentia by an American federal grand jury on drug trafficking charges.