THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
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Reds ask UK for details on GT200 deals

Reds ask UK for details on GT200 deals

Urge UK govt to give papers AMID suspicion of graft.

OPPOSITION leaders submitted a formal request to the British Prime Minister yesterday via the British Embassy in Bangkok to hand over details of the multi-million-dollar sale of fake bomb detectors to Thailand, which led to the detention of scores of innocent people.
British fraudster Gary Bolton was jailed in 2013 for making millions selling the GT200 – which he billed as a “magic wand” able to detect tiny particles of explosives or drugs from hundreds of metres away. 
It was in fact a useless home-made plastic box with a radio antenna – made for $6 (Bt212) but sold for $3,300 up to $13,000 (Bt116,575 to Bt459,200) per unit to governments including Thailand, Mexico and Iraq.
Yesterday Jatuporn Prompan, leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship or “red-shirt” street movement, urged the British Embassy in Bangkok to share details of contracts between Bolton’s firm and Thai officials, including information about production, distribution, sales and prices, including taxes in the UK. “Particularly the contracts of broker companies which sold them (GT200) to the Thai government and how much they cost,” he said via YouTube .
A corruption probe into why the Thai military and several other departments bought the device despite expert advice has ground to a halt.
The Thai army chief at the time was Anupong Paochinda, the current Interior minister and an architect of the 2014 coup that restored the military to power, toppling the reds’ hero Yingluck Shinawatra.
Anupong repeatedly defended the use of the fake detector even as tests cast serious doubt over its efficacy.
In 2010, the year the GT200 was officially banned from export by British authorities, he told reporters that “we don’t have a replacement yet so we continue to use it”.
Last week Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, a senior general during Anupong’s tenure as army chief, said the device was “useful once... but when they were proven to be useless they were not used anymore”.
Rights groups say hundreds of people were detained – some for several weeks – in the restive south after erroneous findings of traces of explosives by security officers using the GT200.
“Regardless of court rulings in the UK and overwhelming scientific evidence, Thai military leadership still defend the use of GT200,” Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch Asia said.
He said the first sales took place in 2005, ultimately amounting to orders of nearly 1,400 GT200s worth $32 million across 15 separate agencies.
Sunai called for a probe into possible loss of life and the “large numbers of wrongful arrests” due to the use of the bogus equipment.
The military refuses to concede it was duped over its rumoured $20 million acquisition, or apologise to those held in what rights groups call a flagrant miscarriage of justice. 
Department of Special Investigation head Pol Col Paisit Wongmuang said the DSI had already submitted its inquiry files to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, after it found grounds for corruption committed by state officials that bought the overpriced devices.
 
Criminal Code charges
It also filed a suit with the Attorney General against the sales agent in Thailand who duped the state agencies into buying the bogus devices. Another suit was filed against the importer of the devices. 
The department also requested that public prosecutors in charge of foreign litigation seek documents from related agencies in the UK. That was done at the end of 2014, but they had not received any documents, Paisit said.
He spoke before a meeting of concerned agencies, called by Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, to seek compensation after several Thai agencies bought the fake devices.
A source said the DSI filed suits with the anti-graft agency in April 2011 against officials of some state agencies, accusing them of malfeasance and violating Article 157 of the Criminal Code.
The DSI also submitted investigation files for 16 special cases against the producers and sales agent in Thailand to the Office of the Attorney General’s Special Cases Division in connection with the GT200 and Alpha 6 scandal.
The country suffered losses put at Bt1.134 billion as a result of 11 agencies buying some 1,398 units of these two devices.
 
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