Gangsters' paradise? Killing spotlights Thailand's reputation as criminal hideout
The killing of an Indian gangster on Phuket island has highlighted Thailand's reputation as a hideout for foreign criminals, even amid a pandemic that has restricted global travel and heightened scrutiny of people's movements.
Jimi "Slice" Sandhu, 32, was gunned down as he left his car on the night of February 4 by two hooded suspects lying in wait outside his rented villa.
Sandhu was widely believed to have links to the criminal underworld of Vancouver, having been deported from Canada several years ago.
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Days after the killing, Interpol in Thailand issued a "red notice" for two Canadians suspected of carrying out the hit. They were allegedly on the island for several weeks and tracked their victim by using a GPS device attached to his car, among other methods.
One of the men, Matthew Dupre, was arrested in Canada in mid-February "and is awaiting extradition", Prayuth Petchkhun, a spokesman for Thailand's Office of the Attorney General told reporters on Monday.
The whereabouts of his alleged accomplice - Gene Karl Lahrkamp - are still unknown. Both men were identified using surveillance footage from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport on February 6.
Thai police told This Week In Asia that the two suspects were among a large cast of foreign criminals based in the country, taking advantage of its substantial transport links to evade arrest warrants issued elsewhere, with some setting up criminal enterprises from Phuket to Pattaya and Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
In the last week of February alone, Thai immigration officers arrested a 29-year-old Indian "mafia figure" wanted for murder, kidnap and extortion who had been holed up in Pattaya since June 2019; three Chinese nationals who were smuggled into the country in a supercar; and a Briton who was blacklisted from entering, but who sneaked in on an Israeli passport.
"The criminals are changing. It used to be Russians in Pattaya who were involved with drug dealing, counterfeiting money and bank fraud," said a senior detective involved in hunting down foreign crooks, who requested anonymity.
"Now it's Chinese, Koreans and Taiwanese doing a lot of the online gambling and call-centre scams, using Pattaya as a base where they rent big houses and use hundreds of phones to target their victims."
These multibillion-dollar scams often target Chinese nationals in China, who the gangs lure in with promises of interest-free loans, fictional stock deals and bogus investment opportunities.
Police have been alerted to the presence of such gangs in the past after noticing that huge volumes of takeaway meals were being delivered to large properties that no one was ever seen leaving, the detective said.
For decades, criminals of all stripes have felt the pull of Thailand, from drug traffickers and dark web administrators to fugitive terrorists like the Bali bomber Hambali and Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
"Thailand has always been a place where you can come and do illicit trades. In the 90s this was the place where a lot of offshore terrorist groups particularly from Sri Lanka would come to buy weapons," said Paul Quaglia, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative and CEO of political risk consultancy PQA Associates.
"It was also the place where you could buy good quality false documents ... passports. A lot of that changed after 9/11 when the US came in and gave money to Thailand to shore that up."
The pandemic has also made criminals' lives more difficult, as the number of flights in and out of the country fell and multiple pre-departure document checks were introduced, with the authorities tracking new arrivals.
Meanwhile, a collapse in tourist numbers has made it increasingly difficult to melt into crowds. Thailand welcomed 40 million tourists in 2019, but has seen only a fraction of that in the years since.
"Before the pandemic, immigration couldn't process the number of visitors fast enough," said Pisal Erb-arb, deputy commander of Thailand's Narcotics Suppression Bureau. "But since Covid it's been easy to catch foreign criminals - they stick out as there are fewer people here."
Among the highest profile arrests by Thai authorities during the pandemic was Hong Kong passport holder Lee Chung-chak, the alleged logistics chief of the Sam Gor group - one of the world's biggest drug networks - who was arrested on a Bangkok street in October 2020.
The pandemic has forced criminals in Thailand to adapt, with face-to-face meetings between top-level gangsters put on hold and drug mules no longer able to hide themselves among other airline passengers as easily.
"But they don't play by the rules the rest of us do, and they are able to shift methods quickly to connect supply and demand," said Jeremy Douglas, Asia representative at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
"Criminals take advantage of open accommodating societies, and Thailand fits the bill - very open for travel and business, and generally easy going."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
