His comment followed a report that 204 cars worth Bt60 million had been impounded from a Lak Si district mall’s parking lot since November by Bangkok’s Thung Song Hong police.

In practice, after a police investigation, they [the police] will contact hire-purchase companies to collect the seized vehicles because the company is the real owner under the leasing contracts. Only after the borrowers pay up all their debts to the leasing companies, the companies will transfer the vehicles back to the borrowers.

If borrowers do not pay their debts on time, the hire-purchase lender will contact them under the debt-collection process. If the debt is not settled, the lenders can take legal action and ask police to return the vehicles to the banks, Anuchart explained.

Surat Leelataviwat, managing director of Kasikorn Leasing, said frequently hire-purchase companies found that borrowers had taken vehicles to others who were not financial institutions for refinancing.

“When the banks give an auto loan to car buyers, they [the banks] face the risk the borrowers will [later] take the vehicles for refinancing with others, [like pawn shops.]”

Lenders in such a situation will repossess the vehicles and file legal proceedings against the borrowers. The repossessed cars will be sold to other customers interested in buying used cars.

Rungnapat Thongkua is the widow of Pol Captain Thawee Meunrak whose suicide was believed to have stemmed from stress over a car-seizure case. Yesterday, she confirmed that Thawee had shot himself in their flat in front of her and their child because of stress from work.

“He complained to me all the time that he was stressed out from work, because he was constantly scolded and pressured. Since he started working on the car-seizure case, he had cumulative stress.

“This [suicide] directly stemmed from his work; he was pushed to file cases as ‘these people and those people’ wanted their cars back,” Rungnapat said.