So today (September 25) Mr Damrong chaired a conference with all the teams at the Sirinart Park offices to review their findings.
Ten pieces of land have been investigated and found to be illegally registered. They are the following: Phuket Arcadia Co (Pullman Arcadia Naithon Beach Resort), Peninsula Spa & Resort, La Colline property development, Land State Co, Three Dolphins (Trisara), Suree Samrit (Malaiwana), the land formerly owned by Suchada Sangsuwan, the Andaman White Beach hotel, Layan Phuket Co (Layan Beach Resort), and Central and City Development Co (West Sands).
All the owners, along with the government officials who signed off on the land papers, are to be reported to the police who will be expected to lay charges against them. In addition the DNP will press the Land Department to cancel the land papers.
The land on which Frenchman Bernard Gaulthier built his villa, next to Trisara, was also found to have been illegally registered, but it was not made clear what action will be taken in this case, apart from a recommendation that the land papers be cancelled.
One piece of suspect land owned by Pavilion Beach Resort Co was found to be outside the Sirinart Park, but inside a forest reserve area. The investigators’ findings will be handed to the Royal Forestry Department for further action.
Probes into other parcels of land discovered during the investigations – one also under Malaiwana, one on which the Istana project sits, and others totalling an estimated 3,000 rai have yet to be completed.
The details of the completed investigations will also be handed to the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) which has been carrying out its own investigations into other parcels of land in Phuket, unrelated to the Sirinart Park encroachment cases.
After the meeting, Mr Damrong went to the Naithon Beach area to show the press the original first boundary marker placed in the ground when the park was established in 1964. The positions of all the other boundary markers for the park were triangulated from that first marker.
The marker, he said, proves what land is in the park and what is not.
Mr Damrong also revealed that he will form 366 six-man teams to investigate illegal and suspect land for the whole of Thailand, starting with Sirinart.
The orders for the teams’ formation will be issued on Thursday (September 27) and the training for the teams will take about two weeks so they can be expected to start working in the middle of next month.
Mr Damrong retires at the end of this month, and so follow-through on his massive operation will depend on his successor. However, he said, he believes the new man will continue the campaign, “or the public will suspect his motives”.
“The 10 existing teams have already done a good job. We will report their findings to the PACC and the Land Department in order to cancel the land papers which encroach on the national park.
“If the land owners and the officials who issued the papers disagree with the investigators’ conclusions, they are free to provide their own evidence to prove their innocence,” he said.
“The suppression of cheating over land in Phuket will be a model for other provinces in Thailand,” he concluded.