“From now on, there will be more effective work on Phuket land investigation,” said Pol Lt Col Prawut Wongseenil, a DSI Special Case Specialist, after a meeting with Sirinart National Park and AMLO officers who came to the island specially for the meeting.
At the meeting Cheewapap Cheewatham, Chief of Sirinart National Park, briefed Col Prawut and Chanchai Pongpassorn, Director of Special Case section 3 of AMLO a briefing on the Phuket land investigation and subsequent suppression action by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Protection (DNP) last year.
He explained that the 11 land plots targeted by the DNP and reported to the police, and progress on phase 2 – investigations into another 366 plots – and preparations for phase 3, which will involve many more pieces of land which are believed to have been stolen from the park.
“We are really glad that the DSI and AMLO are giving us a hand,” Mr Cheewapap said. “There were many things that we could not do alone. Now I have high hopes that the investigations and suppression will go a lot more smoothly.”
Col Prawut said after the meeting, “Today we have learned about the Phuket land issues and after we talked, I found that there are many obvious signs of corruption in the documents they showed us and from what people told us.”
However, he said that all cases would have to be checked first, before the DSI decides which ones to investigate officially.
“We will see, case by case. If the DNP can deal with a case, we will let them do. We will take care of some cases that have many details and complications.”
Meanwhile, Mr Chanchai said that he visited Phuket because the revised anti-money luandering law has specific clauses covering land encroachment.
“The new law, which came into effect on January 2, can be applied to the Phuket land cases, so we came here to learn about the detail of the cases and to see how we can apply the new law to them,” he explained.
“The DSI will do the crime part and AMLO will do the civil part, not only on land encroachment charges but also on corruption involved.”
He said that the members of the new team, comprising all three organisations, will keep Phuket’s tourism needs in mind but said he believes that if the land issue is left unresolved for too long, this in itself would affect tourism.