Prayut failed to honour promises made before coup, Chuwit says

When Prayut seized power by toppling the Yingluck Shinawatra government on May 22 2014, he promised to wipe out corruption and crack down on gambling, the former politician and massage parlor wrote on Facebook late Tuesday night.

Prayut has been done to eliminate corruption by police, he said. They are still taking bribes, and this allows social-vice businesses, especially online gambling, to thrive, he added.

“The prime minister has been in power for eight years following the power seizure [for which he] cited corruption as a cause. He has absolute power like Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkham in the past, but he didn’t act to wipe out or lessen corruption,” Chuwit said. “Instead, he has become a part of the system of nepotism that continues without doing anything.”

By noon Wednesday, the post had been “liked” more than 8,800 times, shared over 510 times, and received more than 530 comments.

Chuwit recently exposed several incidents of alleged corruption by police. He also helped organise a press conference in Bangkok at which a Singaporean friend of a Taiwanese actress said Thai police extorted 27,000 baht as a bribe from the actress and her friends at a Bangkok checkpoint early last month.

There are several Chinese triads operating in Thailand because of corruption at the Immigration Bureau, he said.

Online gambling has intensified during the past few years and three key police agencies in charge of suppressing online crimes are instead being used by the officers in charge for personal gain, Chuwit said.

They are the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau, Cyber Crime Investigation Division 5, and the Police Cyber Taskforce, he said.

Police set up road checkpoints to extort money from foreign tourists and pass on the biggest share of the bribes to their superiors, Chuwit said.

Money laundering and human trafficking suspects can buy their freedom by paying bribes to senior officials at various levels in the judicial system, he said.