FIVE LUXURY cars and illicit drugs valued at more than Bt61 million have been confiscated following separate police raids over the weekend in which three suspected members of a drug gang were arrested.

Police from the Patrol and Special Operations Division and Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) conducted a raid on the house in Bangkok’s Bang Khunthien district yesterday, where they found 480,000 methamphetamine tablets and 48 kilograms of crystal meth, or “ice”.

Two suspects were arrested during the operation – two 17-year-old teenagers (a boy and a girl) whose names were withheld due to their age.

Yesterday’s operation followed a separate raid on Saturday by Samut Prakan police on a house in Samrong Nuea district, where suspected drug dealer Terdsak Ketprom, 41, was arrested. Five luxury cars found in his house, including two Lamborghini cars and two Mercedes-Benz, were confiscated, police said.

Police questioning of the suspect led to yesterday’s raid of the Bangkok house.

‘Major drug dealer’

Police Maj-General Surachet Hakparn, commander of the Patrol and Special Operations Division, said yesterday that police had suspected Terdsak was a major dealer who had worked with Lao drug traffickers in smuggling large amounts of narcotics into Thailand.

A police officer offered to buy drugs from Terdsak in a sting operation that led to his arrest, Surachet said.

The suspects were charged with colluding to smuggle drugs into the country with intent to sell.

Police Maj-General Thammanoon Traithippayapong, the chief of Samut Prakan police, yesterday said investigation found that a drug syndicate in Laos had hired Terdsak’s gang to take care of the narcotics that would later be delivered to their customers in southern provinces, including Chumphon, Songkhla and Surat Thani.

He said police were aware of the identity of the major dealers in Laos allegedly behind this drug gang. They said they would work with the narcotics control board and the Narcotics Suppression Bureau for their arrests in the future.

In January, Thai police made a high-profile arrest of Laotian drug kingpin Xaysana Keopimpha at Suvarnabhumi Airport following his vacation in Phuket.