A Facebook user who himself has colourful tattoos all over his body, posted photos of Shigeharu Shirai, 72 in August last year and wrote: “When I grow old, I want to be like him. He is my idol.”

The photos were shared more than 10,000 times online and were believed to have caught the attention of Japanese police, who asked Thai authorities to move in.

Thai police spokesman Pol General Wirachai Songmetta told a press conference yesterday that Pol Colonel Keisuke Hosaka, first secretary and police senior liaison officer of the Embassy of Japan in Bangkok met Thai national police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda on December 21 last year.

Hosaka asked Thai police to help locate Shirai, who he described as being a senior member of a faction of Japan’s largest “Yakuza” gang, Yamaguchi-Gumi gang.

He was alleged to have been involved in killing the boss of his rival faction by shooting him in the head in 2003.

Seven other accomplices to the crime were subsequently arrested and convicted. The Japanese officials told Chakthip in December that they had information that he had entered Thailand in 2005.

Wirachai said the suspect, who was arrested while he was on a walk in a park, admitted that he was the leader of the Yakuza sub-gang “Kodokai”.

“The suspect has not confessed to murder but has admitted that the victim used to bully him,” the spokesman said.

Following the request from the Japanese police, Thai police started tracking the suspect and found that he entered Thailand in 2005.

An investigation led police to a man with a similar identity who was married to a Thai woman identified only as “Arisara”. He earned an income working as a general worker, such as a painter. However, his marriage ended as he and his wife had frequent quarrels, the police spokesman said.

Tawatchai Jenakom, owner of a rice storage facility, said the suspect used to ask him for a job after his wife chased him out of the house.

Tawatchai described the former crime boss as having a bruised face after fighting with his wife.

Wirachai said the suspect had spent a quiet life in a bid to avoid being noticed and having his secretive past life revealed. Wirachai said police will invite Arisara for questioning.

According to the spokesman, Shigeharu’s friends would visit him about three times a year and give him money, about Bt10,000 each time. Police will expand their investigation to know about his friends and whether they were involved in any crimes in Thailand.

Thai police have charged the suspect with illegal entry, staying without permission and failing to notify authorities of his residence.

Wirachai said police will check whether Shigeharu committed any crimes in Thailand. If he did, he would be tried here first before being deported to his home country.

THE ANTI-MONEY Laundering Office (AMLO) will work with banks and other financial institutions to improve verification procedures for customers applying for new bank accounts.

The agency plans to hold a meeting with representatives of 36 banks and financial institutions today to prevent fraud resulting from criminals using stolen ID cards to open bank accounts.

Currently, institutions could be liable to a hefty fine of up to Bt1 million per wrongful account.

The problem was highlighted when Nicha Kiatthanapaibul, 24, filed a complaint with police after her stolen ID card was used by a criminal network to open multiple accounts to cheat innocent people.

Pol Maj-General Romsit Viriyasan, deputy chief of AMLO, said the agency will discuss preventive measures with banks to avoid unauthorised use of ID cards in opening bank accounts. Nicha claimed her ID card was stolen but she was still jailed for three days while her case was clarified.

Police are examining video footage from banks’ security cameras to show that Nicha did not go to seven bank branches to open accounts that were used by a bogus call centre to lure victims to transfer money into the accounts.

Police earlier said Nicha was put in jail because she failed to show up after being summoned to be investigated in this case. She later filed the complaint with police that she was innocent and provided video footage showing another woman had entered a bank branch to open one of the accounts using Nicha’s stolen ID card.

The deputy AMLO chief said all financial institutions are required by law to properly verify identities by using their ID cards and other personal data.

If banks fail to do the task properly, they are liable to a Bt1-million fine per wrongful account plus an additional daily fine of up Bt10,000 until the mistake is corrected.

Vichien Chidchanoknart, a director of Department of Provincial Administration, the Interior Ministry, said citizens need to keep their ID cards safe and should quickly report and apply for new ones if the card is stolen or lost. The previous ID card will be automatically nullified once reported.

Banks and other establishments must verify the the photo on the ID card matches the user and check if the chip-embedded card is genuine. They must also check with the department’s computer system to ensure that the card is still valid.

He said people can also report to police that their ID card has been stolen but it is advisable to get new ID cards from district offices which will then automatically nullify the lost or stolen ones.

Pol General Veerachai Songmedtha, the deputy national police chief, said investigators are pursuing two cases. The first involves an embezzlement case where victims were cheated by the illegal call centre using stolen ID cards to open bank accounts. The second involves the use of other people’s ID cards to open unauthorised bank accounts.

An exhibition at the site had drawn more than 4 million visitors during the two months after the late King’s cremation.

Early yesterday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha presided over a religious rite to mark the official beginning of the removal of the Royal Cremation structures.

Many loyal Thais joined the merit making by offering food to 89 monks. Buddhist rites were followed by Hindu rituals, as the Thai monarchy has embraced both Hindu and Buddhist concepts and they were reflected in the architecture of the Royal Crematorium.

Privy Council member General Surayud Chulanont presided over the rite ceremony for removal of the grand nine-tiered umbrella at the top of the Royal Crematorium.

“Work will finish in the middle of March. Some parts of the Royal Crematorium, the Songtham Pavilion and two other pavilions, will be reconstructed and displayed at a new museum in Pathum Thani’s Klong 5, which is expected to open in two years,” said Vira Rojpojchanarat, Culture Minister.

“Most of materials used to build the Royal Crematorium and its surrounding pavilions, including wood and metal, will be dismantled and stored at the Historical Ayutthaya Park,” he added.

Decorations and paintings that adorned the key crematorium structures would first be moved to the Office of Traditional Arts in Nakhon Pathom province, said Anan Chuchote, director of the Fine Arts Department.

Other features will be relocated to a new museum in the province so that younger people can learn about Thai culture as represented by the monarchy by viewing the works.

Meanwhile Khun Sirikitiya Jensen, daughter of Princess Ubolratana, joined officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Farmers Welfare, and The Bureau of the Royal Household to harvest rice from the rice field that decorated the Royal Crematorium.

Suan Nong Nooch Tropical Garden in Chon Buri, which provided |landscaping, will use some of the |plants to decorate the Winter Festival at Dusit’s Sanam Sue Pha in February

The group of sea gypsies from Phuket’s Rawai Beach, led by Rawai’s Mayor Arun Solos, submitted a petition to the Phuket Governor yesterday requesting authorities to drop the charges against six of their members who were arrested by officers of Sirinath Marine National Park.

The group insisted that they did not fish in the national park area. Moreover, a Cabinet resolution of June 2, 2010 allows sea gypsies to fish for subsistence living in the national parks’ area.

Earlier on Monday, six gypsy fishermen were arrested by national park officers while anchored at Nai Thon Beach, which is in Sirinath Marine National Park’ area. The fishermen claimed that they just stopped at the beach to let one of their companions get relief from decompression syndrome after their deep dive fishing in the waters of Phang Nga’s Kuraburi District.

Arun emphasised that all six of the fishermen insisted that they did not fish in the national park area, as the park officers have alleged, and had explained to the officers the reason why they were anchored inside the national park. The officers still apprehended all six fishermen.

“We would like to ask for justice, because not only did they not do anything wrong, but the litigation against these poor fishermen will disrupt their lives and they will have to find large amounts of money to get bail,” Arun said.

Niran Yangpan, another sea gypsy community leader, said the fishermen did not intend to damage the ecosystem or break the law. In fact, the sea gypsies were allowed by Cabinet resolution to legally fish for subsistence living inside national parks. Moreover, they used only traditional fishing equipment and take only a few fish for their family.

“We want clarity in the implementation of this exemption, because the sea gypsies often face the problem that the officers do not recognise the allowance,” Niran said. “We do not want any problem with the authorities and [want to] live peacefully.”

However, Sirinath Marine National Park chief Witoon Detpramuanphon had a different version of what took place. The national park officers found the sea gypsies fishing in the restricted area of the national park and possessed a large variety of aquatic animals, he said. That was harmful to the ecosystem and illegal, Witoon said. Also, he cited a doctor’s opinion that one of the arrested fishermen did not really suffer from decompression syndrome, as they claimed.

“We recognise the fishing allowance for sea gypsies as per the Cabinet resolution of June 2, 2010, but this does not mean that they can fish anywhere in the park. We have restricted areas on the water within 500 metres of the shore, which is spared for tourism purpose and preserving the coral reefs,” Witoon said.

“We also found that these fishermen had also fished 22 species of aquatic animals, including sea cucumbers and parrotfish, which are vital animals that help keep the coral reef ecosystem healthy. So we have to arrest them, as their action was clearly a violation of law.”

After receiving the petition from the sea gypsies, Deputy Phuket Governor Sanit Sriwihok said the province would comprehensively investigate this issue and will ask the related agencies for details regarding the 2010 Cabinet resolution.

Constructor Sornchai Sathitrakdamrong was killed January 2 amid murky circumstances.

“We will handle this case transparently,” pledged deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwon yesterday.

“We will proceed in line with laws,” he said after learning from news reports that the fatal bullet must have come from a soldier.

Sornchai was driving his girlfriend to visit his family in Chiang Rai province at night when he was shot for failing to stop at a checkpoint.

Following his death, his family demanded justice. Last Friday, police arrested the assistant village head, Wutthichai Injai, as the suspected shooter but the family’s plea for a transparent, thorough investigation continued as doubts lingered as to whether Wutthichai was the actual or only culprit.

According to the family’s lawyer, officials staffing the checkpoint quickly disappeared after finding nothing illegal in Sornchai’s car.

Sornchai’s girlfriend, who was with him during the shooting, said the couple did not stop only because they did not see any official that night.

On Wednesday, she and Sornchai’s relatives flew from Chiang Rai to Bangkok to meet prominent lawyer Songkran Achariyasap and Deputy National Police Commissioner Pol General Songkran Ransibrahmanakul.

Following the meeting, Chiang Rai police chief Pol Maj-General Yuttachai Puaprasert was ordered to nail down the culprits within three days. Pol Maj-General San Sukwat, who heads a local forensic science division, was also told to report the test results of the lethal bullet by yesterday noon.

The results showed the fatal bullet came from an M16 assault rifle, not the 9mm gun used by Wutthichai. Wutthichai had insisted that he pulled out the gun but fired three shots into the sky. Three soldiers joined the team at the checkpoint on January 2. All three were junior staff.

An informed source said the soldier suspected of firing the fatal shot was based in Phayao province.

“He will be handed over to the Mae Suay Police Station that is in charge of the case by Friday [today] at the latest,” the source said.

He urged police to study suspects’ escape routes.

Chakthip on Thursday presided over a two-hour meeting at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok to give policy on anti-drug trafficking to senior police officers from various police units including Provincial Police Region 1-9, Border Patrol Police Command, Immigration Police Bureau, Central Investigation Bureau.

Chakthip told the Provincial Police Region 1-9 chiefs to adjust operation plans, as the drug trafficking had spread all over the country. He also urged police in the North and Northeast, where drugs were smuggled in transit before heading to the Central and Southern regions to try to intercept the drugs and arrest suspects.

Pol Lt-General Sommai Kongwisaisuk, the NSB commissioner, is coordinating with neighbouring countries in the crackdown.

Chakthip said he was not satisfied with the previous years’ statistics on drug busts although a large amount of drugs and guns had been seized and many suspects arrested. He said police should focus on acting against major drug dealers, whom many of the police drug busts still couldn’t reach because the suspects had well-planned escape routes to evade arrests. “We must study the drug traffickers’ routes and adjust accordingly,” he urged.

In the fiscal year 2017, a total of 294,482 suspects were arrested in 275,633 drug cases – which is a 23-per-cent increase from the previous fiscal year’s 241,866 suspects in 224,075 drug cases. The haul seized in fiscal year 2017 was 215,589,578 yaba pills, 5,204.75 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, or “ice”, 411.25 kilograms of heroin, 14,729.98 kilograms of dry marijuana, 45.45 kilograms of cocaine and 129,718.29 kilograms of Kratom leaves.

From 8.15am to 9.05am, it was rehearsal time for the F-16 Fighting Falcon show, AU-23 Peacemaker show and Eurocopter EC725’s search-and-rescue mission show. Rehearsal time for the JAS 29 Gripen fighter aircraft show arrived at 2.30pm-2.50pm.

On the ground there was an equally exciting scene of “Fancy Drill” (or marching with the music) and a martial art performance rehearsal by students of the Air Technical Training School.

The air shows, “Fancy Drill” and martial art performances will all be held for the Children’s Day celebration at Wing 6 on Saturday from 8am to 3pm.

National Children’s Day is celebrated annually on every second Saturday in January to let children have fun and to create public awareness about the youths’ significant role in the country’s development. For the occasion, government offices including Government House, Parliament House and major military installations are open to children and their families. At military bases, children get to watch parades and shows and explore military vehicles on display.

The fugitive, Shigeharu Shirai, 72, was arrested by a SWAT team on Wednesday in the sleepy central Thai market town of Lopburi while he was out shopping.

Japanese authorities have called for his arrest over an alleged role in the shooting of a rival in Japan in 2003, after which he fled to Thailand, married a Thai woman and drifted into a seemingly peaceful retirement.

That was until a Thai local posted some photos of the diminutive, frail-looking retiree playing a streetside checkers game with his intricate gang tattoos on full show and a missing little finger — yakuza members often slice off the tip of a finger to atone for an offence.

The photos were shared more than 10,000 times online and caught the attention of Japanese police, who asked the Thai authorities to move in.

“The suspect admitted that he was the leader of the Yakuza sub-gang Kodokai,” Thai police spokesman General Wirachai Songmetta said, referring to an affiliate of Japan’s largest yakuza gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The yakuza emerged in the chaos of post-war Japan turning into multi-billion-dollar criminal organisations involved in everything from gambling, drugs and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets and white-collar crime.

They were long tolerated as a necessary evil to keep order on the streets and getting things done quickly — however dubious the means.

Unlike the Italian Mafia or Chinese triads, yakuza are not illegal and each group has its own headquarters in full view of police.

Shigeharu Shirai stands accused of shooting dead the boss of a rival faction for which seven other members of his gang were caught and imprisoned for between 12 and 17 years.

“The suspect has not confessed to murder but has admitted that the victim used to bully him,” the Thai police spokesman added.

The mobster boss kept a “low profile” during his stay in Thailand, police said, receiving money two or three times each year from a visiting Japanese man.

With no passport or visa, he was officially arrested for entering Thailand illegally and could be extradited to face prosecution in Japan as early as Friday.

Around 70,000 Japanese live in Thailand and Japan is the country’s biggest investor, largely in the automobile and electronics sectors.

In 2017, Japanese spent more than $4 billion in Thailand, nearly half of all foreign direct investment.

Head of the foundation’s missing persons centre, Ekkalak Lumchomkhae, said an average of 400 children went missing in the past three years. The foundation early last year had reported a total of 424 children had been missing in 2016.

He said most missing children voluntarily ran away from their homes to escape domestic violence, while some fled to stay with boyfriends or in response to invitations from those they befriended via online media. Missing children were usually aged between 13 and 15.

Ekkalak also cited a report in the past four years that 12 missing children had been murdered, and three of those cases remained unsolved: a seven-year-old Cambodian girl was found murdered in Bangkok in April 2014; the skeleton of a two-year-old child – suspected to be that of a missing female toddler who had gone missing four months earlier – was discovered in Nakhon Si Thammarat in July 2016; while a six-year-old child was found murdered in Phuket in December 2013.

Pol Colonel Wathee Assawutmangkool, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine’s Division for Blood, Biochemistry and Gun Residue Testing, said the institute’s Thailand DNA Pro-Kids Project since 2010 until now had collected DNA data of 1,292 children in Thailand.

The project’s main goal was to help identify thousands of children of unknown parents who were being cared for in welfare shelters across the country, he added.

CRD commander Pol Colonel Chaiwat Burana said his office, in keeping with international standards, would update every two years the sketches of children under 18 who were reported missing, while sketches of missing youth aged over 18 would be updated every five years. There was 70 per cent similarity in the sketches, based on physical information, photos and family members’ testimonies, and periodic updating of the sketches was to keep up with the missing persons’ appearances to help locate them.

This is all part of the “3 Pagodas Challenge”, in a bid to raise in excess of 1 million baht (approx. £23,000).

All money raised from donations and sponsorship will be split between 4 worthwhile charities: Thailand Veterans General Hospital, Action 4 Diabetes, The Royal British Legion and Breast Cancer Research. Each charity has a personal value to each cyclist and seeks to benefit people in the UK, Thailand and Myanmar.

The British Embassy Bangkok is proudly sponsored by Zuellig Pharma, AIS, VFS Global, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, Pencari Training, Sivatel, Tesco Lotus, The British Club Bangkok, Fitness First, Seafresh Industry, The Rembrandt Hotel, Time Matters Global Special Speed Logistics, Thai Airways and Singha Corporation.

Every year, The British Embassy Bangkok supports a number of local community organisations in Thailand. Last year, Embassy colleagues helped build facilities for the children at the Klong Toey Foundation for Slum Children and Wat Pathum Wanaram School and assisted with the cats at PAWS, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving the lives of Bangkok’s stray cats.

You can track the team’s progress on Twitter @BKK3PC and Facebook @3PagodasChallenge. Further donations can be made via their Just Giving page or by contacting Sebastian Kay directly on Sebastian.Kay@fco.gov.uk.