Military official alleged to have demanded THB20m to release triad suspects
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
The Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTARF) is investigating allegations that an official from the Armed Forces Security Centre demanded 20 million baht from 11 Chinese suspects in exchange for letting them go after police searched a house in Bangkok’s Sathorn district on Monday.
The search was a joint operation between the Department of Special Investigation, the Metropolitan Police Bureau, and the Armed Forces Security Centre.
The joint team was acting on a tip-off that the residence was masquerading as the official consulate of Nauru, said RTARF spokesman Lt-General Theeraphong Patthamasingh on Tuesday. Nauru is a small island-nation located northeast of Australia.
Police found several Chinese nationals residing in the house. Among them was a suspect wanted in connection with the police raid on Jinling nightclub in Bangkok’s Yannawa district in October last year. The raid kicked off a police investigation into Chinese triads operating in Thailand that has seen 5.3 billion baht in assets seized from alleged drug kingpin Chaiyanat “Tuhao” Kornchayanant and his associates.
Theeraphong said investigators found evidence that an official participating in Monday’s raid let 11 suspects go after detaining them in exchange for money. Initial investigations revealed that the official is from the Armed Forces Security Centre.
Theeraphong said an investigation committee has been established to look into the incident and will send its findings to the Chief of Defence Forces as soon as possible.
Three generals among 80 immigration police charged in triad visa scam
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
Investigators believe at least 80 immigration police officers, three of whom are generals, have been aiding about 5,000 members of Chinese triad criminal gangs to stay illegally in Thailand.
Deputy National Police chief General Surachet Hakparn told reporters on Monday that the suspects have been summoned to hear charges filed against them, which include malfeasance and demanding bribes.
The police launched a nationwide investigation in November after former massage parlour tycoon and politician Chuwit Kamolvisit provided information on alleged Chinese triads operating in Thailand.
The tip-off quickly led to an arrest warrant being issued for alleged triad kingpin Chaiyanat “Tuhao” Kornchayanant, a Chinese national who gained Thai citizenship by marrying a senior Thai police officer.
Surachet, who led the investigation, said officials were found to have issued student and other visas to some 3,000 Chinese nationals in the Northeast and more than 1,000 in the North from 2020-2021, allowing them to stay in Thailand and engage in illegal operations.
Among the 5,000 recipients is the owner of Club One, a famous entertainment venue in Pattaya, which police suspect is a triad base of operations.
“We need to weed out bad officials from the force of over 20,000 immigration police,” said Surachet.
“Investigators are also coordinating with the National Anti-Corruption Commission in tracing the finances of these suspected officials.”
Authorities have so far confiscated assets worth 5.3 billion baht from Chaiyanat, including real estate, buses, bank deposits, businesses and an aircraft. The Justice Ministry announced last week that it is seizing another 3 billion baht in assets owned by Chaiyanat and people in his network.
‘Benchakitti not a golf course’, says Bangkok governor as park trees wilt
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
Bangkok has not abandoned its duty to take care of Benchakitti Forest Park, said governor Chadchart Sittipunt on Monday, responding to public complaints of trees wilting in the park.
Photos shared widely on social media show several trees drooping in the 300-rai public park in Klong Toei district, indicating a lack of watering and proper care.
On Sunday, the Facebook page “Benchakitti Forest Park” posted photos of water trucks manned by volunteer soldiers spraying the park’s trees. The posts prompted netizens to ask why the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) was not doing its job of taking care of the park.
On Monday, Chadchart responded by saying park maintenance had been outsourced.
“We hired a private company to take care of Benchakitti Park since it also serves a learning centre and therefore has a complex design,” Chadchart said. “Taking care of such a delicate public park is different from maintaining a golf course, where grass and trees can stay green all year long.”
The governor added that BMA officials have been working with the Army’s Maintenance Engineering Department, which built the park, to come up with short- and long-term plans to procure sustainable water sources for plants in the park, especially during drought.
“The BMA is taking care of all the parks in Bangkok equally. Benchakitti Park is relatively new and there are some aspects about it that we have to learn from the designer and constructor as we continue working on it,” he said.
Chadchart added that several agencies have been participating in taking care of the park, including the BMA’s drainage and environment office, the Treasury Department which owns the land, and private partners who have been tasked with inspecting the park’s equipment and water quality of its lake.
“Thank you for your concern about the park. The BMA is doing the best we can to complete all the [park-related] projects that we have planned,” he said.
Benchakitti Park officially opened in 2004 on land formerly owned by the Tobacco Authority of Thailand to honour Her Majesty Queen Sirikit on her 72nd birthday. The park is situated next to the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre and is connected to Bangkok’s other large park, Lumphini, by a 1.3km-long elevated pedestrian walkway and bicycle trail at the southwest corner. Benchakitti was expanded as a forest park last year and now incorporates wetlands, cycle paths, overhead walkways and a bicycle trail.
Owner of online lottery platform defiant after raid by police, several agencies
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
Police and several government agencies turned up at the head office of Kong Salak Plus, the popular online lottery platform, on Monday morning following allegations by the Government Lottery Office (GLO) that it was deceiving consumers.
The unfazed CEO of Kong Salak Plus, Phanthawat Nakwisut, said he would go on Facebook Live to announce the lottery results on Tuesday and lottery ticket buyers from his platform would still receive full prizes without tax deduction in keeping with the earlier practice.
The raid on Kong Salak Plus at SSP Tower in Bangkok’s Watthana district was led by Pol Lt-General Prachuap Wongsuk, assistant National Police chief who heads a police committee in charge of cracking down on overpriced lottery tickets.
The raid by Metropolitan Police Bureau officers was joined by officials from the Office of the Consumer Protection Board, the Anti-Money Laundering Office, the Revenue Department, and the Department of Special Investigation.
Prachuap said police had obtained a search warrant after the GLO filed a complaint with the Consumer Protection Police Division that Kong Salak Plus had been selling overpriced lottery tickets. The platform was also accused of buying up tickets from small-time vendors for reselling at inflated prices.
Prachuap said the GLO maintained that it had not appointed Kong Salak Plus to sell its tickets.
He added that police would check whether Kong Salak Plus had violated any law by claiming to be selling the tickets at their face value of 80 baht per ticket but charging another 25 baht per ticket as service fee.
GLO director Noon Sansanakom said on Monday that the GLO had filed complaints with police against all online platforms selling lottery tickets because they buy up tickets from vendors for reselling at inflated prices.
Noon said Kong Salak Plus and other platforms might be charged with deceiving the public by claiming that they bought tickets for over 80 baht each and reselling them at 80 baht (plus service fees).
“It’s impossible to buy tickets for over 80 baht and resell them at 80 baht. So, this may constitute deception of the public,” Noon said, making no reference to the service fees charged by the platforms.
Noon added that the GLO has never licensed Kong Salak Plus to sell its tickets and the platform also was not in a position to prevent buyers under 20 years of age from buying, unlike the Krung Thai Bank’s Pao Tang app that requires buyers to identify themselves first.
After the search, Prachuap did not elaborate on evidence the police and officials might have found at the head office as they left without speaking to reporters.
Also on Monday, a former Special Branch police officer, Santhana Prayoonrat, met Yutthana Praedam, deputy director of the DSI, at 11am.
Santhana claimed that he had come to hand over evidence of alleged grey businessmen’s connection with Kong Salak Plus.
Santhana claimed that he had been gathering the evidence for seven or eight years and his evidence allegedly showed the operation used funds of 10 million baht from drug traffickers.
Kong Salak Plus CEO Phanthawat returned to his office at 1.30pm when the officials had already left.
He said he had a personal business in the morning so he was not at the office when the officials arrived.
He said he was not worried about the allegations because he had not engaged in any wrongdoing from the beginning.
Phanthawat argued that other platforms had been buying up lottery tickets from vendors and reselling them for over 10 years but the GLO had not taken any action.
He said many other platforms had for years been following the practice of adding a service charge to the 80 baht face value of each ticket.
New learning centre aims to help Thai SMEs with global barcode standards
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
Nongluck Ajanapanya
GS1 Thailand, a division of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), on Monday opened a new learning centre with the goal of educating the country’s entrepreneurs, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on how to go global with barcode standards.
Khomsan Laosillapacharoen, chairman of GS1 Thailand and FTI’s vice chairman, said in an opening statement that the “FTI Connect Learning Center by GS1 Thailand” is a business learning centre focusing on the global language of business, also known as barcodes, which is the most widely used system of standards globally.
GS1 is a non-profit international organisation that develops and maintains its own barcode standards and issues company prefixes.
“Our medium and large-sized businesses had already implemented barcodes, but our small businesses had not. So, this centre will serve as a simple portal to help them understand what a barcode is, why it is important, and how to obtain one,” Khomsan stated.
Meanwhile, the FTI Connect Learning Centre will demonstrate some of the most recent use case technology and innovation related to barcodes so that visitors can see the benefits firsthand.
Besides, Khomsan intends to use this learning centre to prepare Thai entrepreneurs and businesses for the next 2-D barcode version.
“Instead of the familiar barcode, the next one will resemble a QR Code. This new version of the product code will include product information, all manufacturing processes for goods and services, such as packaging, production period, and any other information that will assist buyers and consumers in tracing the origin of the product,” he explained.
He predicted that the 2-D code will be widely used worldwide within the next five years. Its goal is to meet the demands of sustainable trends.
Kriangkrai Tiannukul, FTI’s chairman, praised the importance of the FTI Connect Learning Centre.
During the opening ceremony, he stated that barcodes are the global language of products. It is an essential tool for international trade.
Aside from helping boost the confidence of Thai SMEs to go abroad, the learning centre aims to educate the general public about the country’s industries and their evolution, FTI history, and other current interesting economic trends and issues.
“With our interactive display, visitors will enjoy learning about business knowledge,” Kriangkrai said.
The learning centre is now open for free visits on the first floor of Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep’s Creative Technology Building.
Visitors must pre-register and limit their visits to 5-20 people per round. Each round of the visit lasts about 30 minutes.
Police, FDA raid 6 more sites for fake plastic surgery silicone strips
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials joined police to raid and confiscate a horde of fake silicone pieces at a plastic surgery clinic’s five branches and at the manufacturer’s warehouse.
The joint operation was announced on Monday by FDA secretary-general Paisarn Dunkum and Pol Colonel Tharakorn Lertporncharoen, deputy chief of the Consumer Protection Police Division (CPPD).
The latest raid was conducted last Thursday, following two previous operations on December 20 and 22.
The raid also uncovered information that Korawin Clinic’s five branches had used the counterfeit silicone pieces in 1,621 surgeries last year. Of them, 1,436 were nose jobs, 154 chin implants and 31 both nose and chin surgeries.
Paisarn said the FDA sought help CPPD’s help to investigate the use of fake silicone pieces at clinics operating under the Korawin brand.
The FDA and CPPD also obtained a court warrant to search a deserted rice mill in Suphanburi’s Sri Prachan district on December 20.
There they learned that the rice mill was being used as a factory to make silicone for nose and forehead jobs.
They also seized counterfeit equipment, 68 moulds and 1,098 silicone pieces in the December 20 raid. The cost of the confiscated items was estimated at 3.5 million baht.
Nattapapas (surname withheld) was subsequently arrested for manufacturing silicone and medical equipment without a licence. She reportedly admitted to running the business for two years and said her biggest buyer was K Medical Thailand Co Ltd.
K Medical reportedly placed orders for Korawin Clinic’s Ngam Wong Wan branch in Bangkok and in Khon Kaen province.
Paisarn said subsequent investigation found that the counterfeit silicone was later distributed to 30 other branches of the clinic nationwide. Officials also found documents proving that the Korawin Clinic had paid more than 2 million baht for the fake silicone pieces.
On December 22, police and FDA officials raided the Ngam Wong Wan branch and seized 12,282 pieces for nose jobs, 27 pieces for forehead implants and 3,855 pieces for the chin. All had been made in Nattapapas’s factory.
On January 12, FDA officials searched the clinic’s branches in Nakhon Pathom, Rayong, Udon Thani and Khon Kaen as well as the Ngam Wong Wan branch and a warehouse in Nonthaburi.
Police said the January 12 and December 22 raids resulted in the seizure of 12,282 pieces for nose jobs, 2,775 for foreheads and 1,107 for chins as well as 998 illegal medical equipment and 474 items of illegal medication.
The FDA chief said the silicone pieces cost 60-80 baht each to produce and were used in surgeries costing 4,900 to 50,000 baht.
The FDA chief and CPPD deputy chief said more arrest warrants will be sought but did not elaborate.
Teachers up in arms over draft National Education Act
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
More than 400,000 teachers and educational personnel nationwide dressed in black on Monday, urging Parliament to postpone consideration of the draft National Education Act.
The draft, which aims to enhance Thailand’s education system to meet international standards and boost the country’s competitiveness, has been included in the Parliament session since January 10-11 this year.
Among teachers who participated in the event, a group of teachers in Lampang province said some details in the draft act would not support learners’ development. The group also claimed that the draft act’s centralised command would affect their independence in teaching.
“We have given our opinion many times to the special House committee to amend the draft act but there is no response,” the group said, “Instead, the committee hastened proposing the draft act to the Parliament session.”
The group reaffirmed that its move was a peaceful protest under the Constitution, adding that the special House committee’s move to propose the draft act before the Parliament session ends on February 23 is hasty.
The group urged Parliament President Chuan Leekpai to consider the draft National Education Act after the general election, which is tentatively scheduled for May 7.
1,500 jobs up for grabs for Thais on three US cruise ships
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
Labour Minister Suchart Chomklin on Tuesday urged Thais who can communicate in English to apply for 1,500 jobs available on three US cruise ships, which could pay up to around 87,000 baht a month.
Suchart said CTI Group Worldwide Services Inc has 1,500 job vacancies in 37 positions for Thais who are at least 21 years old.
The vacant posts include chefs, waiters and waitresses, beverage staff, electricians, maids and garbage collectors.
Suchart said successful applicants would work on one of three cruise ships for six to nine consecutive months and would be paid between 19,618 to 87,176 baht per month, plus tips. They also will get free accommodation and food.
Applications can be submitted from January 18 to February 16, the minister added.
“Thai workers are naturally pleasant-mannered and polite and have a smiling face at all times, so they are in high demand by foreign employers,” Suchart said.
“Working abroad will widen your vision and provide you working experience while helping earn foreign currency for the country,” he said.
Pairoj Chotikasathien, director-general of the Employment Department, said the CTI Seafarer Recruitment (Thailand) Co Ltd has submitted an agreement for recruiting services and a letter from CTI Group to the department, stating the need for 1,500 staff.
Pairoj said applicants must have at least six months of experience in the positions they apply for and must have good command over English.
Cabinet extends diesel excise cut for four more months to control cost of living
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
The Cabinet on Tuesday extended the diesel excise relief of 5 baht per litre for four more months, Deputy Finance Minister Santi Promphat said.
Speaking to reporters after the weekly Cabinet meeting, Santi said the Cabinet reached the resolution to extend the cut from January for four more months to help reduce the cost of living and to prevent consumer product prices from rising.
The latest round of diesel excise cut would cost the Excise Department around 40 billion baht in lost revenue, or about 10 billion baht a month.
The latest round is the sixth one since February last year. Combined with revenue loss in the latest round, the government would lose about 140 billion to 150 billion baht in diesel excise revenue.
Santi said the cut would not affect the financial situation of the government as it had received an extra 33 billion baht income from the auction of mobile phone and radio bandwidths as well as tax fines on imported goods following court rulings. He did not elaborate.
Santi added that revenue received by the Finance Ministry during the first two months of fiscal 2023 was 55 billion baht higher than the target and the ministry was confident of receiving 2.6 trillion baht in revenue at the end of the fiscal year in September.
“For fiscal 2023, the government would borrow about 695 billion baht to offset the budget deficit while the projected spending would be 3.1 trillion. It is expected that at the end of the fiscal year, there would be a cash balance of 710 billion baht with the treasury,” Santi said.
“So, the government’s financial status is stable and it would not be affected by the excise cut,” he reiterated.
GLO director Noon Sansanakom said on Monday that the GLO had filed complaints with police against all online platforms selling lottery tickets because they buy up tickets from vendors for reselling at inflated prices.
Noon added that the GLO has never licensed Kong Salak Plus to sell its tickets and the platform also was not in a position to prevent buyers under 20 years of age from buying, unlike the Krung Thai Bank’s Pao Tang app that requires buyers to identify themselves first.
Santhana claimed that he had come to hand over evidence of alleged grey businessmen’s connection with Kong Salak Plus.
Kriangkrai Tiannukul, FTI’s chairman, praised the importance of the FTI Connect Learning Centre.
On December 22, police and FDA officials raided the Ngam Wong Wan branch and seized 12,282 pieces for nose jobs, 27 pieces for forehead implants and 3,855 pieces for the chin. All had been made in Nattapapas’s factory.
The FDA chief said the silicone pieces cost 60-80 baht each to produce and were used in surgeries costing 4,900 to 50,000 baht.
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