Wanted Chinese, South Korean criminal suspects arrested in Thailand

The arrests of Xu Wei, 40, and Kim Junbeom, 26, were announced at a press conference at Briton Grand Hotel in Pattaya on Wednesday.

Immigration Bureau commissioner Pol Lt-General Pakphumpipat Sajjaphan told the press conference that the two suspects were alleged members of transnational criminal gangs and were wanted on Interpol arrest warrants.

The immigration chief said Wei was accused of laundering some 2.5 billion baht for a call-centre gang that operated in Cambodia.

He said the bureau checked and found that Wei had entered Thailand on July 26, 2020 with a tourist visa and had been hiding at a condominium in Pattaya where he was arrested. The date of the arrest was not provided.

The immigration chief said Wei was wanted on an arrest warrant in China and his visa had been terminated.

Wei was suspected of laundering the money for the gang into bitcoins and sending the digital money back to China to buy gold and property.

In the other case, Pakphumpipat said that Kim was suspected of smuggling narcotics into South Korea via mail parcels from June 2022 to March this year.

He said Seoul police has busted Kim’s gang and arrested over 70 suspects but Kim fled to Thailand on July 13 last year. Seoul police seized drugs worth 620 million won (16.3 million baht) and 19.15 million won cash from the gang.

Kim was arrested at a housing estate in Tambon na Jom Thian in Sattahip district of Chonburi province.