RANGOON, Burma – Former drug kingpin Lo Hsing Han died Saturday (July 6th) after suffering a heart attack at the age of 80, media reported.

A crony of Burma's former junta regime, Lo accumulated a fortune in the early 1970s as a leading figure in the ballooning drug trade, with an empire that included heroin trafficking and opium production in the Kokang region of Shan state, The Irrawaddy reported.

Lo, the father of Burmese tycoon Steven Law (also known as Tun Myint Naing), was arrested in 1973 and sentenced to death on charges of treason.

"He was sentenced to death, not for drug trafficking, which he had official permission to engage in, but for 'rebellion against the state,' a reference to his brief alliance with the Shan State Army (SSA). The death sentence was never carried out and he was treated as a VIP even when in prison," veteran journalist Bertil Lintner said.

Lo was pardoned after seven years, and less than a decade later, was thought to have assisted the military regime in negotiations with rebel Communist fighters, AFP reported.

In 1992 he founded Asia World, which would become one of Burma's most successful business conglomerates, again helped by the junta.