Guards quizzed in jail drug search

In the prison investigation, police searched a house belonging to a guard and found documents of suspicious financial transactions. They arrested two men ages 41 and 18 and seized 14 grams of crystal meth, some bullets and krathom leaves.

At a house belonging to a corrections official suspended in a disciplinary probe, police found financial transaction documents, a shotgun, two pistols and ammunition.

Police said the corrections official provided information about illegal activities in the prison and asked for protection. He said inmates paid Bt3,000 to Bt5,000 to have their shackles removed instead of earning that right through good behaviour.

At the third house, which belonged to a man with suspected ties to the cellphone ring, police arrested Narong Ketboon, 33, who was wanted for attempted murder. They also found three cellphones, tightly packaged and ready for smuggling. 

The fourth location was the offices of a construction company that was hired to build the prison’s cellblock of 10 solitary cells where 39 cellphones were found hidden in the brickwork. 

A fifth location was a house belonging to another suspended corrections official.

The Corrections Department has requested that 450 border patrol police be reassigned to guard nine highsecurity prisons, but national police chief Pol Gen Priewphan Damapong said the prisons were within the Corrections Department’s responsibility. 

Priewphan added that it shouldn’t be difficult to secure the prisons as long as the regulations are strictly followed and the officials involved in wrongdoing were punished. He acknowledged that police routinely assist in case of jailbreaks and that the prison could ask for border patrol police to guard the area surrounding the prison, but not inside, due to lack of expertise. 

Also yesterday, the national police chief announced a drug bust in which two suspects, Channarong Jomboonreung, 26, and Kritsanathorn Pattaranonwongsa, 37, were caught on Tuesday along with 1.02 million yaba pills worth Bt300 million, Bt1.4 million in cash, a sedan, four cellphones and 18 bank account books. Channarong was nabbed first in Bangkok’s Beung Kum district along with 100,000 yaba pills. His arrest lead to the search of a Nonthaburi home and the arrest of Kritsanathorn along with 920,000 tablets.

The investigation of the suspects’ bank accounts found transactions from 100 drug networks, with the money flow totalling Bt100 million.

Kritsanathorn told police the drugs were from a Burmese drug network and were transported from the North to Pathum Thani where he picked them up to store at the house pending distribution. The payments would be gathered and transferred to the gang leader in Myanmar. He said he’d been doing the work for a year and was paid Bt100,000 a month.