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Koch would later veto the idea of shooting Maskasem as he travelled by motorcade: “No high-power guns. No explosives,” he wrote in July 2021. “We can’t shred a car convo with an M2 in downtown [Bangkok],” before following up with a voice message: “We need to hurt these guys; we need to cause them pain.” On the messages, Koch’s voice comes through between breathy pauses, thickly accented and sometimes eerily deadpan. “Only then will they move to a reasonable stance. I will essentially own this country.”

Communications from around this time also suggest Koch was suffering paranoiac episodes. In Panama, an associate had reported to Koch that two unidentified men had been making inquiries about him and trying to find his home. When Steyn heard about it, he offered to put together a security team to travel to Panama. But Koch declared he was moving to a new location each night for his own protection, while also spiking his apartment with an unspecified lethal substance. “Anyone coming in here is going to die,” he told Steyn. The two men turned out to be legal couriers, trying to serve Koch papers as part of a dispute involving the MS Satoshi.