The animals were left over from the last animal seizure at the controversial temple mid last year, and they will be moved to other wildlife breeding operations in nearby provinces for better care.

In the previous seizure, the animals were deemed to be confiscated assets. That operation was led by former deputy director general Adisorn Nuchdamrong.

He led a group of park officials and veterinarians to move 147 tigers and some others animals from the Tiger Temple, or Wat Pa Luang Ta Maha Bua.

The operation unearthed a lot of talismans and wild animal carcasses, including tiger cubs, in the compound. The temple was suspected of being linked to wildlife trafficking.

The tigers were moved to the Khao Son and the Khao Prathapchang wildlife breeding stations in nearby Ratchaburi province. But a number of other protected and endangered animals, including barking deers and thamin deers, remained in the wild at the 400 rai (64 hectare) temple compound.

The wildlife sanctuary chief under the Protected Areas Regional Office 3 office, Sikhapong Krajaejan, led the operation on Thursday. He said up to 120 animals were fed in the compound but they were scattered as they roamed free.

Only six were caught on Thursday.

It is estimated that the operation will take around a month to complete.

“We have to wait for them [the animals] somewhere on a rugged terrain and do so with patience, before putting them in cages. And we can do this only during the morning and the evening because if we chase them during the day, they would be hurt,” said the office’s director Yanyong Lekhawijit.

They animals will be moved to the Khao Khor wildlife breeding station in Petchabun province, and the Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife breeding station in Uthai Thani.

As a part of the probe, DSI officials conducted a search at JMW Motor Co’s two sites in Bangkok yesterday.

The DSI said that although unclear at this point whether the firm has engaged in illegal offences, there are enough grounds to launch an investigation.

“We found that 30 vehicles had been registered as locally assembled, but they are in fact imported and all these vehicles used documents from this firm,” senior DSI investigator Pongsathorn Yuen-amnuay said yesterday.

According to Pongsathorn, these vehicles included the much-publicised Ferrari that caught fire on a road in Nakhon Ratchasima back in 2010 while being transported.

After the fire, relevant authorities began looking into the case and found grounds to suspect that the car may have been illegally imported.

If investigators find that falsified documents were provided, the company and its executives could face several charges, including forgery, perjury and money-laundering.

Pongsathorn said officials found 12 Harley Davidson motorbikes and a Rolls-Royce sedan at JMW Motor’s two sites.

“We were told that these vehicles had been sent by the Customs Department, which need space to park vehicles it has seized,” Pongsathorn said. “We will look into this further.”

JMW Motor has been operating at the Ladkrabang Industrial Estate in Bangkok, and according to law it is allowed to assemble vehicles for export only.

This facility was one of the sites searched yesterday and the second site was the managing director’s home. DSI officials plan to examine documents and computers seized from the two locations.

Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) deputy chief Rear Admiral Somkiat Polprayoon, who welcomed the 12 women at the Songkhla’s Sadao Border Checkpoint yesterday, said the case of the remaining nine women was under legal process and they should be released later.

On Wednesday, an ambulance collided with a pick-up in a minor accident in Nonthaburi province. The ambulance driver Natchapon Sakhon, 35, said he jumped out to take responsibility and that he had asked the pickup driver to wait for him at the hospital because his team was on an emergency call to the house of Chusri Onsamphan, 74, to provide medical help.

“But he refused, demanding that I stand by at the scene of the accident,” Natchapon said.

Another ambulance had to be dispatched to Chusri’s home, but by the time it got there, the patent’s heart had stopped and she could not be revived.

Police said the accident had caused only minor scratches on the pick-up truck and Chusri’s relatives were angry that help did not arrive in time.

National Institute of Emergency Medicine secretary-general Anucha Setthasathian said the relatives blamed their loss on the pick-up driver.

“I hope nothing like this happens again. Giving way to an ambulance is in fact no less that giving lives,” he said.

Two supporters of former premier Yingluck Shinawatra were fined yesterday in a contempt-of-court case involving public prosecutors.

They were found guilty and fined Bt500 each by the Supreme Court’s criminal division for holders of political office.

Public prosecutors told the court that they had been harassed on court premises by Mingmongkol Sonakul and Thas Wanphraruehas on October 7, 2016, at a hearing in the case against the former premier.

Yingluck is facing trial for alleged negligence of her official duties while implementing the controversial rice-pledging scheme during her administration.

Mingmongkol is a movie director, while Thas was a former House subcommittee member during Yingluck’s tenure in office.

Mingmongkol and Thas had told the court that they stared at public prosecutors after the court session prior to a lunch break but did not take photographs as alleged by the plaintiffs.

The court found that they had stared at the prosecutors up-close unnecessarily while on court premises, and were therefore guilty. Because the act was considered light they were fined Bt500 each.

In the rice-pledging case, Yingluck is facing charges of negligence of official duty allegedly resulting in damages of more than Bt500 billion to state coffers. The former premier also faces a civil liability lawsuit in connection with the scheme.

The latest of several plans hatched over the decades is the Master Plan for Regional Waterborne Transport in the Lower Mekong Basin, which was finalised and endorsed by the Mekong Joint Committee last year.

Addressed at the same meeting was the Development Plan of International Navigation on the Lancang-Mekong River 2015-2025, which the Thai cabinet recently approved in principle along with preliminary work on the Navigation Channel Improvement Project on the Lancang-Mekong.

News of the go-ahead for the projects quickly reached locals living along the Mekong in Chiang Rai, where large Chinese cargo ships are already causing headaches.

It remains unclear who is spearheading the projects, but the fact that the starting point is the Chinese port of Simao strongly suggests Beijing is behind the push. In fact, China has been attempting to develop the river for several years, blasting out obstacles and rapids upstream to clear passage for its cargo ships to Chiang Rai’s Chiang Saen and Chiang Khong districts.

It’s obvious who stands to benefit from the projects. But what remains less clear is the scale of potential damage, concern over which has spurred residents living along the river to cry foul.

Shortly after the cabinet resolution in late December, the Network of Thai People in Eight Mekong Provinces joined some 10 other activist organisations to issue a statement strongly opposing the resolution. They claimed that the projects, especially the navigation development plan, would cause severe impacts on the riverine ecosystem as well as local livelihoods.

They also echoed government concern by warning of potential changes to national riverine borders if shoals and rapids were removed.

But what is likely the critical point is the challenge to the current river governance process itself.

Rules governing the ways in which the river can be used are imposed by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), which acts as a regional forum on sharing the river’s resources.

One of the few regulations that all Mekong countries must comply with is the Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement, under which consultation is required for any projects deemed to cause potential impact on neighbouring countries.

But the regulation suffers from a murky definition of consensus that leaves decisions open to interpretation. More importantly, the MRC’s rules and regulations apply only to the signatories – the four Lower Mekong countries – and don’t cover upstream countries China and Myanmar.

As if unwilling to accept that its upstream channel is part of the same river, China has given it a different name – the Lancang. China has never been an MRC member, preferring the status of dialogue partner, meaning that it remains outside MRC rules and regulations.

As such, the emerging projects pose a serious challenge to the existing system of river governance.

The MRC must now prove that its stated purpose – to help promote sustainable development for all – is not empty talk. And Mekong countries must help make that happen, by foregoing their impulse to pay lip service to MRC goals before hastily clambering aboard the bandwagon every time they see short-term benefits.

Otherwise, “development” threatens to become a term of bitter irony for the millions who depend on the river for their livelihoods.

Flight lieutenant Kanok Thong-purk, a THAI executive vice president, said the result of the investigation would be known within 30 days.

Thailand is among seven countries named by the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which found conspiracy to corrupt or failure to prevent bribery by Rolls-Royce, involving payment of US$18.8 million (Bt663 million) to regional intermediaries.

“Some of the money was for individuals who were ‘agents of the State of Thailand and employees of Thai Airways’,” the SFO said. These agents “were expected to act in Rolls-Royce’s favour with respect to a purchase by Thai Airways of T800 engines”, the BBC reported.

British daily The Guardian reported that the firm paid more than $36 million between 1991 and 2005 to agents to help it secure three separate contracts to supply Trent aero engines to Thai Airways.

Rolls-Royce (Thailand) refused to comment on the accusations yesterday.

The SFO revealed 12 counts of conspiracy to corrupt or failure to prevent bribery also in six other countries – Indonesia, India, Russia, Nigeria, China and Malaysia. Rolls-Royce employees allegedly paid bribes to middlemen and foreign officials to win bids from 1989 to 2013.

The aerospace company made the admission on Tuesday at the high court in London, a day after it was revealed that it would pay 671 million pounds in penalties to settle nearly 25 years of corruption allegations.

The payment will comprise 479 million pounds (Bt29.1 billion) plus cost to the UK’s SFO, 141 million pounds to the US Justice Department, and another 21.5 million pounds to Brazilian regulators.

The long-running corruption case is considered the biggest individual investigation conducted by the SFO.

The probe revealed “the most serious breaches of the criminal law in the areas of bribery and corruption”, the judge said in a written judgement issued at Southwark Crown Court in central London.

However, Rolls-Royce was allowed the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the SFO, which was approved by the court on Tuesday. Under the agreement, organisations are allowed to pay penalties with avoidance of prosecution if they confess to economic crimes such as fraud or bribery.

Following the settlements being reached, Rolls-Royce chief executive Warren East apologised for the misconduct uncovered during the investigations launched in 2012.

“The behaviour uncovered in the course of the investigations by the Serious Fraud Office and other authorities is completely unacceptable and we apologise unreservedly for it,” he said in a statement.