“Mr T”, who was arrested at Hatyai airport upon his return from Chiang Rai last Wednesday, could likely be only the right-hand man to the real mastermind of the syndicate, who Thai authorities are pursuing vigorously following the arrest of his senior lieutenants recently.
“We (Thai authorities) will get the real mastermind,” NSB’s deputy head Maj Gen Supakit Srijantaranon told Bernama recently, adding that the noose was tightening around the mastermind’s neck following the recent arrest of his senior henchmen, especially “Mr T”.
Besides the Johor-born “Mr T”, Thai authorities also arrested a Taiwanese man and two Thai women.
Thai authorities said Supakit began to suspect the involvement of another much larger figure besides “Mr T” after conducting a comparison of his assets with the value and quantity of the drugs the syndicates smuggled into Malaysia before this.
He said the syndicate made a total of five successful drug smuggling activities to Malaysia before faltering on their sixth attempt in March last year when Thai authorities intercepted 282kg of “Ice” in Sadao and arrested two Malaysian men.
During the investigation, the two arrested Malaysian men spilled the beans on the syndicate’s operation as well as the involvement of “Mr T”, whom they accused of being the owner of the smuggled drugs, he said.
The authorities believe Mr T was in Chiang Rai, before his arrest, to place an order for another consignment of drugs.
“Each smuggling attempt involved hundreds of kilogrammes of ‘Ice’, worth more than 1 billion baht (about RM126 million),” according to him.
He said “Mr T” had remained tight-lipped when asked by the authorities about the syndicate and his purported senior role in it.
“We are very confident with our evidence against ‘Mr T’ and the syndicate,” he said, adding that the officers involved had been working round the clock for a year gathering evidence since the arrest of two Malaysian men in March last year.
Without evidence, the authorities will not take action.
He said they also received good cooperation from their Malaysian counterparts, with Malaysian police believed to be sending its officers to Bangkok to glean more intelligence about the syndicate from “Mr T”.
According to Supakit, Thai authorities started to unravel the syndicate’s large operations following the arrest of “Mr T” and others, involving not only the smuggling of huge amounts of drugs into Malaysia but also the running of various businesses in Hatyai and Sadao, near the Malaysian border.
“In my 30-year career as a policeman, this is the biggest syndicate that I have come across,” he said, adding that the authorities needed more time to sift through mountains of documents related to the syndicate’s drug and business operations in Thailand.
Supakit said at least 16 companies believed to be owned by Malaysians and alleged to be related to the syndicate had been identified by the authorities. The businesses involved properties, entertainment centres, nightclubs, hotels, apartments, resorts and other sectors.
The owners and managers of the companies, he said, had yet to present themselves to the police for questioning about the allegations. He said that if they failed to come forward, arrest warrants would be issued against them.
The Thai police and government, he warned, would not let any criminal syndicate turn the country into a place to launder money gained from illicit activities.