Before his December escape, Sokha (a pseudonym) was the property of a deep-sea trawler captain. The 39-year-old Cambodian, his teenage son and two young nephews were purchased for roughly $650, he said, each through brokers promising under-the-table jobs in a fish cannery.

There was no cannery. They were instead smuggled to a pier in neighboring Thailand, where they were shoved aboard a wooden vessel that motored into a lawless sea. His uncle had fallen for the same scam five years prior and escaped to warn the others. But Sokha told his son, then just 16, that this venture would turn out differently. He was wrong.

“We worked constantly, for no pay, through seasickness and vomiting, sometimes for two or three days straight,” he said. “We obeyed the captain’s every word.”

Near-daily death threats reinforced the captain’s supremacy. So did his Vietnam War-era K-54 pistol, and the night he carved up another slave’s face in view of the crew. “For 20 hours a day, we were forced to catch and sort sea creatures: mackerel, crabs, squid.” It’s back-breaking work, under the searing tropical sun. “But the fish wasn’t for us,” he added.

So who was it all for?

The answer should unsettle anyone who closely examines Thailand’s multi-billion dollar wild-caught seafood industry and the darkest links in its supply chain.

“It’s an export-oriented market. And we know the countries where these products are exported to,” said Lisa Rende Taylor, chief technical specialist with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking or UNIAP. “Do the math.”

For Americans, the calculation is worrisome. Thailand is the United States’ second-largest supplier of foreign seafood. Of America’s total seafood imports, one out of every six pounds comes from the Southeast Asian nation.

In 2011 alone, Thailand exported 827 million pounds of seafood worth more than $2.5 billion to the US, according to National Marine Fisheries Service figures. The only nation that consumes more Thai seafood exports is Japan.

Murder is an occupational hazard. But a monotonous job assembling iPads is heaven compared to slavery on a Thai trawler, where conditions are as grueling and violent as any 19th-century American plantation. The lucky escape within a year or so. Less fortunate are those traded several times over for years on end.

Denying that the fruits of forced labor reach the biggest importers of Thai seafood — Japan, America, China and the European Union — has become increasingly implausible.

The accounts of ex-slaves, Thai fishing syndicates, officials, exporters and anti-trafficking case workers, gathered by GlobalPost in a three-month investigation, illuminate an opaque offshore supply chain enmeshed in slavery.

A long trail of offshore operators — slave boats, motherships and independent fishmongers — can obfuscate the origins of slave-caught seafood before it ever reaches the shore. While the industry’s biggest earners rely on clannish and violence-prone fishing crews for raw material, they’re distanced from the worst abuses by hundreds of nautical miles and several degrees of middlemen.

The result is that many Thai factory bosses have no idea who caught the seafood they process for foreign consumers.

There are caveats. The majority of Thailand’s two largest seafood exports to the US — tuna and shrimp — are sourced differently. Most “Thai” tuna is actually imported from overseas and processed for re-export. The shrimp industry, though routinely accused of abusing poor migrants, is at least vulnerable to spot checks on seaside farms.

The same cannot be said for deep-sea trawlers, the favored vessel of slave-driving captains.

The species caught by Thai trawlers legal and illicit alike include sardines, mackerel, cuttlefish, squid, anchovies and “trash fish,” tiny or foul-tasting catch ground into animal food or preserved to create fish sauce. Americans consume these breeds en masse. One in five pounds of America’s imported mackerel or sardines comes from Thailand, according to US government records. For processed fish balls, puddings or cakes — made from trawlers’ trash fish — the figure is one in three pounds. Thai fish sauce supplies nearly 80 percent of the American market.

All that trawler catch ends up in familiar American fare: anchovy pizzas, squid linguine, smoked mackerel salads and fish fillets on ice. Even pets are entangled: trash fish is a common dog- and cat-food ingredient. But industry representatives in Thailand admit there’s often no way to tell whether a particular package of deep-sea fish was caught using forced labor.

Using bar codes, American shoppers can track packaged Thai-exported seafood to its onshore processing facility, said Arthon Piboonthanapatana, secretary general of the Thai Frozen Foods Association. “You can trace it back to the factories.”

But exporters, he said, are not in the business of policing the fishing syndicates that supply their factories. “We only have the power to enforce our members,” Arthon said. “We have no power to enforce other stakeholders such as boats or fishermen.”

American seafood importers consider themselves similarly powerless in overseeing far-flung Thai boats. “Western regulatory agencies have little or no reach, or authority, over various parts of the value chain,” said Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, America’s chief seafood trade organization and lobbying group based outside Washington, DC. The institute will promptly respond to allegations against specific factories, he said. But so far, it has not found an effective way to monitor conditions on deep-sea boats catching US-bound fish.

“We have started discussions with our members about just how far an audit could realistically go and whether, perhaps, there are dockside audits that could be developed,” Gibbons said.

The “nature of boats being at sea,” he said, presents a major challenge to industry’s self-policing efforts.

International pressure to rid Thailand’s seafood trade of slavery is mounting. Thailand teeters just above the US State Department’s worst human-trafficking ranking and could be downgraded this summer. Last year, during a visit that vexed Bangkok officials, a UN rapporteur declared that forced labor is “notoriously common” in Thailand’s fishing sector and even alleged police complicity.

“It’s not like monitoring brothels, plantations or factories … all this labor is at sea,” Rende Taylor said. “So it’s essentially a universe where captains are king. Some are out to make as much money as possible by working these guys around the clock and being as cruel as they want to be.”

Chinese automakers must overcome this credibility problem as they ramp up exports and build new assembly plants in Africa, in an attempt to maintain growth despite sluggish car sales back home.

Call it the “fong kong” curse — a slang term in South Africa for cheap made-in-China products that fall apart soon after purchase. Zimbabweans similarly call low-quality Chinese products “zhing zhong.”

While China’s auto industry is the world’s biggest, new vehicle sales in the Middle Kingdom have slumped due to the country’s cooling economy, and manufacturers are making a push overseas, according to a 2012 report by the international consultants KPMG.

Africa, along with Latin America and Southeast Asia, are seen as key markets with long-term growth potential.

Companies like Geely, Chery and Great Wall are betting that their low-cost cars will be a hit with a growing class of African consumers in countries including Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia. In the last year there has been a rash of announcements about new African assembly plants for Chinese cars and trucks, as manufacturers look for ways to keep prices low.

In March, Chinese automaker Foton Motor group opened an assembly plant in Nairobi, aimed at boosting sales of its pickup trucks and light vehicles in East Africa.

The assembly plant will keep Foton prices low because it means the company will avoid paying a 25 percent duty on fully built imported units.

At the plant opening, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga urged manufacturers to produce cheaper cars to enable more Kenyans to afford new vehicles, Chinese state media reported.

In South Africa, China’s First Automobile Works (FAW) is investing $25 million to build a light truck and passenger car plant in an industrial development zone near the southern coastal city of Port Elizabeth. Construction began in February on the plant, which is jointly financed by the China-Africa Development Fund.

New vehicle sales in China slowed to a growth rate of just 2.5 percent in 2011, after hitting growth rates above 30 percent in the two previous years, due to factors including the removal of government incentives and limits on new car purchases.

Exports, on the other hand, soared by nearly 50 percent to a record 849,900 vehicles in 2011, according to the China Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.

The global appeal of Chinese cars is the rock-bottom price — ranging between $6,000 and $15,000. But a reputation for poor quality remains a major sticking point.

“Africa” magazine, a Chinese state-run monthly, described the “constant contact and frictions” experienced by automaker Gonow in exporting cars to Africa.

Early shipments of cars were beset by problems: cooling components in engines didn’t work in the hot African climate, and strips of rubber trim fell off car bodies after being exposed to salty air during the journey across the ocean.

“A client took some pictures and sent them to Gonow, asking if the company was selling them used cars,” said the report, which noted that the automaker has grown stronger from its experiences in Africa.

Chinese carmakers also fall short in after-sales care. Customers in Africa complain of a lack of available spare parts.

Andrew Thomson, co-head of automotive for KPMG China, said that in a recent global survey of auto executives, a “striking” 74 percent said that excellence in customer service is the key to successful car retailing, adding: “This is an area where there is some room for development in China.”

And this is nothing new.

Before the UK’s 1994 Black Monday crash, financier-philanthropist George Soros, sensing central bankers with their heads in the sand, made billions shorting the pound sterling — essentially borrowing the currency, selling it, and later paying back his creditors when he could buy it cheaper. He successfully repeated this trick as Southeast Asia went into crisis in 1997.

Now, the euro zone increasingly appears to be in a terminal mess. Growth has stagnated. Debt is out of control. In vulnerable countries like Spain, interest rates are veering toward usury. Governments are bailing out banks. And Greece has imploded, both politically and economically; this week, citizens have been emptying their bank accounts, always a grim sign that economic Armageddon looms.

It’s time for the average person to worry yet again about his job or her disintegrating retirement account. But for the crafty and courageous, opportunity beckons.

So, what investments are they salivating over?

One obvious option would be to shop for cheap stocks on European exchanges. This “value” approach is a time-honored strategy. It’s used by moguls such as Warren Buffet, who advised in the bleakest days of the 2008 mortgage meltdown: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Anyone who took Buffet’s advice and bought US stocks at the nadir of the financial crisis could have nearly doubled their money by now. Bargain hunting is particularly tempting for individual investors, who could shift 401K allocations into mutual funds or exchange traded funds (ETFs) with, say, exposure to Spain or Portugal, whose markets are trading at lows not reached in years.

But it’s not yet time to pursue this strategy, insists David Twibell, president of Denver-based Custom Portfolio Group. “Europe is a slow-motion train wreck … stuck with an unsustainable fiscal mess,” he says. “There’s often a fine line between courage and stupidity, and I would say investing in Europe right now comes dangerously close to the latter.” One critical risk factor: If the euro zone does indeed break apart, you may end up holding investments in national currencies that could plummet in relation to the dollar, wiping out any gains from stock appreciation.

Still, Twibell sees opportunity on the horizon. “There will be a time to bottom fish in Europe,” he says. “The advantage Europe will have in the next few years is that many of its problems will have been resolved at about the same time Japan and the US are starting to feel the repercussions of their excessive borrowing. When that time rolls around, European stocks and bonds will both look very attractive.”

If it’s unwise to cast your lot with Europe at the moment, what about betting against it? That’s an idea that appears to be gaining popularity among “sophisticated” traders, who have begun banking on the currency’s decline.

This is a growing trend. On balance, the “smart money” wagered that the euro would fall in late 2011, but had pulled back from that approach in 2012, says Michael Arold, a model manager for Covestor, an online asset management company.

In recent days, with Greece and Spain floundering and voters across Europe rejecting Germany’s austerity prescription, “Large traders have increased their net short positions again,” says Arold. “Downside momentum is strong,” he adds; “If someone wants to short the euro, he should do so when the smart money starts to get short, not at the end of this process.” It may, in fact, already be too late.

Of course, speculating against the world’s second biggest economy is risky. Economists point out that Europe still has options for addressing the crisis, which could interfere with crisis-oriented strategies. And leaders have compelling reasons to put out the fiscal conflagration. The economy of paymaster Germany, for example, has greatly profited from the bloc. Meanwhile for Greece, a return to the drachma could reap mass bankruptcies, decimate the financial system and plunge the economy into even greater straits, at least in the near term. Moreover, as some experts point out, the dark historical events that eventually led to Europe’s unity still haunt the continent, giving it strong reasons to take action.

Fordham University economist Laura Gonzalez cautions investors to be “wary of speculators that are betting too heavily against the euro anticipating the end of the currency because the EU is not breaking apart any time soon.”

By Gonzalez’s estimate, Europe needs a Marshall Plan to promote growth, along with a two year grace period allowing governments to get their deficits under control. Additionally, a devaluation of the euro so that it’s at par with the dollar would help boost exports and “give the Euro zone a little more oxygen to recover.” The currency bloc, she says, will most likely “come out of this troubling period stronger, more realistic, diverse and dynamic.”

On the other hand, whether Europe can manage its colossal challenges depends on its policymakers — a group that has often failed to demonstrate the kind of vision, decisiveness and creativity demanded of effective leadership.

In other words, whatever the outcome, for the moment the only certainty in Europe will be uncertainty. Markets will swing wildly. The euro and sovereign interest rates will rise and fall.

In this caprice lies yet another opportunity to cash in, says Andrew Karolyi, a finance professor at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Karolyi explains that hedge funds (and others) are exploiting market swings using a strategy called a “leveraged volatility play.” The idea is simple: In advance of an event that is likely to have a dramatic impact — such as the Greek elections, an EU economic summit, or perhaps Ireland’s late May referendum on Europe’s new austerity pact — an investor places bets that profit from significant swings, regardless of whether the movements are positive or negative.

Investors generally accomplish this using options: contracts that allow you to buy or sell an asset (like euros) in the future, at an agreed upon price.

For example, if the euro were trading around $1.30 (where it was before the May 6 Greek elections), you would purchase options granting you the right, say, to sell euros if the exchange rate falls below $1.29 or buy them if the rate rises above $1.31 — wagering that the political outcome would drive either substantial gains or losses. The contracts can be bought for relatively modest premiums, and can be leveraged by borrowing on margin.

If the euro swings outside the window defined by the options, the investor pockets the difference between the strike price of the option and the value of the asset.

Incidentally, currency options are readily available to individual investors, through brokers. For anyone so convinced of euro-chaos as to pursue this strategy: One benefit of the leveraged volatility play is that the risk of loss, in the event that asset prices don’t swing as much as expected, is limited to the premiums paid for the options.

Since the euro has slid to nearly $1.25 since the elections, investors deploying this strategy have profited handsomely.

Of course, we should point out that past performance is no guarantee of future results. And even if it were, that would not be reason to gamble the family nest egg without exercising extreme caution. After all, while eye-popping profits make for good headlines, high-flying financiers also often suffer breathtaking losses: Soros, for one, lost $2 billion in the 1998 Russian debt crisis, $700 million in the tech bubble, and $300 million in the 1987 US equities crash.

But he can afford it. Can you?

Now the two have finally met face-to-face and the encounter seemed cordial if hardly warm. Following the ceremonial reviewing of the guard of honor – during which Merkel had to gently nudge Hollande in the right direction on the red carpet – the two held an hour -long meeting. They then addressed the throng of international journalists in a joint press conference during which Merkel remained stony-faced during much of Hollande’s comments, interspersed with the odd smile.

The pair did seek to downplay their differences and strike a friendly tone with Merkel even joking that the lightning that had struck Hollande’s plane on his way to Berlin was perhaps a “good omen.”

“I’m not sure whether there is sometimes more divergence perceived in the public realm than there really is,” the chancellor told the press conference. “We are aware of our responsibility, as Germany and France, for a positive development in Europe. Carried by this spirit I believe we will of course find solutions for the different problems.”

Both tried to show a united front on Greece, which risks ejection from the euro zone if it backs anti-austerity parties in the fresh elections likely after the parties failed to form a government. “Just like Frau Merkel,” Hollande said, he wanted Greece to remain in the euro zone while insisting that Athens meet the terms of the bailout agreement.

Yet when it came to the crux of the differences between the two, on austerity versus growth, it was obvious that the only thing that had been agreed so far was that they disagree.

After all, it remains to be seen how Merkel’s strict stance on rapidly reducing budget deficits can be married with Hollande’s plea for some kind of stimulus package to boost growth.

Hollande reiterated his promise to reopen talks about the fiscal pact, the agreement on strict budget discipline which he has said France will not ratify unless a growth element is also adopted.

“I said in the campaign, and I repeat today, that I want to renegotiate what was established at a certain moment,” Hollande told reporters. “Everything that can contribute to growth must be put on the table. I don’t want growth to be just a word, but tangible measures.”

He mentioned boosting competitiveness, as well as Euro bonds – essentially pooling the debt of euro zone members – something Merkel has so far flatly rejected.

He did not, however, mention tinkering with the European Central Bank’s mandate, surely a red line if ever there was one in Berlin.

For all the inauspicious beginnings, observers predict that the two will eventually hit it off. Both play on their modest, down- to-earth style and exude an air of pragmatism rather than charisma. Hollande depicts himself as “Mr Normal” in contrast to the Bling Bling of his predecessor Sarkozy, while the unassuming Merkel is often seen doing her own grocery shopping. And both are said to have a wry sense of humor in private.

Furthermore, Hollande’s gesture of appointing Germanophile Jean-Marc Ayrault as his prime minister will have gone down well in Berlin.

Yet, it is hardly a meeting of equals. Merkel is an old hand in European politics now, in her seventh year in office, while Hollande’s previous executive experience has been confined to serving as mayor of the small town of Tulle.

Furthermore Germany is the EU’s economic powerhouse, with its export-driven economy keeping the rest of the euro zone out of recession, according to figures released on Tuesday. And Berlin has long been calling the political shots in Europe, with the fiscal compact being dreamed up by Merkel, as a way of preventing EU states from getting into deeper debt in the future.

At the same time Merkel is increasingly isolated in Europe, as there is a growing realization that austerity is choking off growth. Hollande knows that other leaders, including conservatives like Italy’s Mario Monti, also want Berlin to budge on its debt reduction fixation.

Hollande came to Berlin straight from his inauguration ceremony in Paris. After beating Sarkozy on May 6 he will feel he has a mandate from the French people to push for a change of direction in Europe. Yet he also faces a tough economic situation back home, with just 0.1 percent growth in the first quarter and growing unemployment, now at a 13-year high of 10 percent. If the economy were to contract even further, it could make it very difficult to fulfill many of his campaign pledges, such as reversing Sarkozy’s pension reforms.

Merkel has her own problems, despite the strong economy. Her party, the conservative CDU, has just suffered a bruising defeat in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Her coalition is increasingly fractious, with Bavaria’s CSU leader Horst Seehofer publicly slamming the CDU candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia Norbert Roettgen on TV for his campaign, while the FDP is unpredictable due to an ongoing leadership crisis.

The fact that she needs a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to ratify the fiscal compact means she is dependent on the opposition SPD. And while the party has broadly backed her euro policy, it has been emboldened by Hollande’s victory and the strong showing in NRW. On Tuesday the party’s leaders said that they would delay the vote on the fiscal pact, originally scheduled for late May, saying it wanted to see concrete growth measures as well as austerity.

That would leave time for Merkel and Hollande to agree to some sort of compromise solution.

The pair said they will seek an agreement ahead of the next big summit of EU leaders in June. “It will be very important that Germany and France present their ideas together at this summit, and we have talked about the preparation,” Merkel said.

They will see each other before that, meeting at an informal dinner of EU leaders on May 23, as well as at the forthcoming NATO and G8 summits.

However, Hollande is unlikely to show much willingness for compromise with Berlin just yet. After all his party is facing legislative elections in mid June and he will want to make sure he is not seen to be backsliding on campaign pledges.

Hollande wants his five-year term to start with his Socialist Party securing control of the National Assembly so that he can push through his agenda. Otherwise he faces a frustrating period of “cohabitation” with a prime minister from the opposing camp, such as occurred when conservative Jacques Chirac’s presidency coincided with the premiership of Socialist Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002.

As such Merkel cannot expect Hollande to veer from his insistence on growth measures. And for all his unassuming manner, he could well prove to be a more difficult partner than Sarkozy in the long run.

Nevertheless Merkel is also likely to stand firm on many issues. Asked on Tuesday night if she feared Hollande’s campaign promises she replied coolly: “I am seldom afraid, as fear is not a good counselor in politics.”