Today (19 June) 8 police officers along with the special operations unit “Hanuman”, the brigade and AMC officials searched 12 targets throughout the southern region, including a gold shop in the historic neighborhood of Wang Burapha, Bangkok. Reports say the famous gold shop, Wang Burapa generated over 3 billion which didn’t sit right with the tax revenue department. After investigating it was discovered they were laundering cash from drug money supplied by drug cartels in neighboring countries.
Officials arrested Mee Chu Mueang (Mr. Thiraphon), 40 years old, Tum Kochkaew, 29 years old, along with 10 other suspects. Mr. Thiraphon is associated with a large drug network code-named “Marigold” which covers the entire southern region of Bangkok, as well as many other networks in prisons.
Initially, Authorities found the financial path of Ms. Daorueangruang Somsaeng who was transferring large amounts of money in and out of 113 accounts. One of the bank accounts was from Chomphu Co., Ltd., a famous jewelry store located in Wang Burapha Phirom Subdistrict, Bangkok.
They were making lots of money according to their books but without actually selling any gold. They were red-flagged after the bank made a 1.5 million baht transfer from Ms. Marigold’s account to Mr. Theeraporn’s account and then continued to transfer several million baht into other accounts. After examining their past performance from the year 2015, they found that the company had grown dramatically.
They Smuggle drugs from Myanmar and then sell to retail customers in Trang province and other areas in the southern region. Ms. Dao Rueangruang Somsaeng, one of the arrestees was imprisoned at the special prison in Bangkok for coordinating and receiving drug money transfers from various networks and then transferred to other accounts.
After laundering, Thailand’s multinational drug dealers will transport their cash back using natural channels because other methods of moving large amounts of money across the country are at high risk of being confiscated.
Therefore, they began to create new under the radar money laundering methods to convert into legal money or into investments.
There are 4 types of money laundering methods of the narcotics movement:
1. Investment in gold trading business with gold shops
2. Cross-country oil trading and investing
3. Investment in construction materials and business
4. Investment in agricultural equipment trading
Authorities are currently still following their money-laundering trail from Chomphu Co., Ltd. (Borong Lee) Co., Ltd. in order to find links to other offenders as well as finding other gray businesses which were formed from the laundered drug money.
