Over 7,000 luxury cars in joint probe

JUSTICE Minister Paiboon Koomchaya said yesterday the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), plus the Customs Department and Department of Land Transport (DLT) would finish their probe into 7,123 luxury cars by December.
Investigators suspect the vehicles were falsely registered between 2010 and 2013 as having been locally reassembled to evade import taxes. Paiboon said the owners and importers of illegally registered cars would face tax and |criminal code prosecutions.
Other agencies meeting yesterday included the Excise Department, the Revenue Department, the Central Institute of Forensic Science and the Thai Industrial Standards Institute.
Paiboon said the DLT would confirm if the cars matched those registered in its system and would also check each car’s engine and parts serial numbers with information from manufacturers in the country of origin. The process could take three months, he added.
The cars will then be returned to the DSI and Customs will check if they were locally re-assembled. Legally registered cars would be returned to their rightful owners while further investigations would seek to collect evidence and prosecute people involved with criminal offences on illegal cars, Paiboon said.
He said that the process would be transparent so people did not suspect underhanded practices.
Pol Lt-Colonel Kornwat Panprapakorn, chief DSI investigator for the Northeast, yesterday referred to another six luxury cars in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Pak Chong district that had caught fire during transport in 2013, which sparked the initial investigation into luxury car tax-evasion scams.
Kornwat said arrest warrants had been issued for five charges related to two Malaysian suspects who allegedly imported the cars. The investigation was ongoing, he added.
The DSI already has taken up 11 luxury car tax-evasion cases and passed information on to Customs to check the first batch of 399 cars – eight of which were later retroactively taxed for more than Bt3 million. Kornwat said the procedural delays might be related to the cars being returned to the DSI for further investigation.
The work would proceed faster, he said, because there was now a clear division of the workload between departments.
Surapong Sitthikorn, a lawyer for Wat Paknam, said he would bring a Mercedes-Benz that was allegedly found in possession of acting Supreme Patriarch and temple abbot Somdej Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn, also known as Somdej Chuang, to the DSI office yesterday.
He said his team would file a complaint against the garage that sold the vehicle to the temple.
Surapong added that Somdej Chuang had already signed papers to return the ownership of the vehicle to another monk several days before.
“That monk had donated the vehicle to Somdej Chuang initially,” the lawyer said.
Meanwhile, DSI chief Paisit Wongmuang said investigators had requested an appointment to interview Somdej Chuang this week.
In relation to another probe of a luxury car allegedly belonging to Phra Khru Palad Sitthiwat, abbot of Wat Pailom in Nakhon Pathom, Paisit said investigators were still waiting for official documents from Jaguar Land Rover Ltd and relevant government agencies.