Myanmar's Shwe Kokko: Inside a city 'built on scams'

Shwe Kokko , or Golden Raintree , is accused of being a city built on scams, home to a lucrative yet deadly nexus of fraud, money-laundering and human trafficking.

The man behind it, She Zhijiang, is languishing in a Bangkok jail, awaiting extradition to China .

But Yatai , the company which built the city, paints a very different vision of it as a resort city, a safe holiday destination for Chinese tourists and haven for the super-rich.

Shwe Kokko was described as part of Xi Jinping's Belt-and-Road Initiative or BRI .

Beijing alleges She Zhijiang, a small-town Chinese entrepreneur, is a criminal mastermind.

He says he founded his company Yatai on the Thai -Myanmar border, and insists it is not part of the BRI project.

He and partner Saw Chit Thu have been sanctioned by the British government for their links to human trafficking.

Shwe Kokko is run by She Zhijiang and Yatai City is open to anyone who can go in and out freely.

But it is impossible to know how much money is made through online gambling, and how much through outright criminal activities like money laundering and scams.

U.S. Institute for Peace says they may even move some of the more notorious components of the scam industry, like torture, into other zones.