Police superintendent and 4 others charged in 6 million baht corruption

A British man desperate to get out of jail was cheated out of 6 million baht which he used to try and buy his freedom, with five people charged in the scheme. A Mae Hong Son police superintendent claimed to be using his connection to the assistant national police chief to curry favour and was the highest ranking officer charged.

A Thai woman has requested bail for the British man whose name was withheld from the press after the Immigration Bureau in Bangkok had taken him into custody because Interpol had issued a red notice for him. She was denied in her petition for his release.

Despaired, she turned to connections – common in Thailand for help with police matters. She talked to a guy who knew a guy who could contact another guy (the police superintendent) who is said to have gone to school at the Royal Police Cadet Academy with the assistant national police chief.

They thought that the tenuous connection to one of the top-ranking police in Thailand would be enough to help grease the wheels and get immigration to respond and secure bail for the British. But that’s when they were told it would cost 6 million baht to free him.

The first two men in the chain of connections then attempted to see the British man in the Bang Khan district detention centre in Bangkok on June 29 but were denied as it was a breach of regulation. They contacted the superintendent to try to get them access to the prisoner, and he told the officer denying them that the British man had worked as an informant for him and should be allowed to have visitors. The officer on duty still denied them.

After that, the man who knew the superintendent told the Thai woman to transfer 6 million baht to a few bank accounts, but after it was transferred, he stopped answering his phone and made no attempt at getting the British man out of jail. The woman then went to Pak Klongsan police and filed a complaint.

Investigators confirmed the June 29 incident, including the superintendent dropping his name in the phone conversation to influence the officer on duty that wouldn’t budge. They found the 6 million baht had been run through third-party bank accounts before being disbursed to the superintendent and his family, as well as the connection that told the Thai woman to deposit it.

The superintendent and the man who contacted him, along with three others found to have opened the bank accounts the money was siphoned through, are being charged with colluding to commit fraud.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post