(CTN News) – The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) reported that Thai and British law enforcement collaborated to restore 30 smuggled luxury cars to the UK.
The case began when the British National Crime Agency (NCA) requested that the DSI identify 35 expensive cars stolen in England between 2016 and 2017.
Pol Maj Yutthana Praedam, the DSI’s acting director, stated that the cars were valued at more than £2.4 million, or over 100 million baht.
Thai and UK Law Enforcement Recover Stolen Luxury Cars
Officers from a special task force known as “Operation Titanium” raided nine locations in Bangkok and seized 30 vehicles, including eight Mercedes-Benzes, five BMW M4s, five Porsches, three Nissan GT-Rs, one Lamborghini Huracan Spyder, a Ford Mustang, a Lexus, and a Mini Cooper. Five other vehicles are being tracked down.
A Thai native named Intarasak Techaterasiri, also known as Boy Unity, organized a network that stole automobiles from the UK and illegally smuggled them into Thailand. The investigation revealed that Intharasak and 12 associates were involved in illicit activity.
According to Pol Maj Yutthana, the suspects rented and acquired the vehicles from several rental firms in the United Kingdom. They registered the automobiles with UK customs as new cars and sent them from Heathrow Airport to Singapore. The autos were sent to Thailand as marine cargo.
Investigators discovered that the conspiracy employed three companies as nominees for imports. These companies had registered with the Customs Department and paid their annual taxes, allowing them to register the vehicles with the Department of Land Transport (DLT) and resell them.
Intarasak was a STT Auto Service Co director, which operated showrooms in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit and Ratchadaphisek neighborhoods.
He also imported reassembled cars and sold them to celebrities in show industry and politics, but the purchasers could not register them with the Department of Land Transport.
He was detained in June 2017 and taken before the Criminal Court. The judge granted him bail, but he later skipped it. Later that year, he was found guilty of evading duties on imported autos, some of which were stated to have deceptively low prices.
The Supreme Court then sentenced him to four years in prison on tax evasion allegations, and a warrant for his arrest was issued on July 5, 2022.
Intharasak was arrested again in August 2022, five years after he jumped bail.
Source: Bangkok Post
