Crime
Owner of Bali Restaurant, Briton Matthew O’Neill, Busted in Bangkok with 500 Grams of Cocaine
BANGKOK – Thai police have arrested the British National Matthew Kevin O’Neill, 40, on suspicion of being a drug trafficker in Bangkok.
Pol Maj Gen Poonsub Prasertsak, attached to Metropolitan Police Bureau (MPB) said Matthew Kevin O’Neill, 40 was caught on Saturday night in the Sukhumvit area with nearly 500 grams of cocaine in his possession.
Police stopped a public bus and found Mr O’Neill on the vehicle carrying a backpack. They found the drugs in his backpack and seized it as evidence, Pol Maj Gen Poonsab said.
The drugs were packed in foam containers bundled with plastic wrap, according to police.
Pol Lt Col Jirakrit Jarunphat, deputy superintendent of Thong Lor police station said Mr O’Neill said he was paid around 60,000 baht by a black man identified only as Vincent to deliver drugs to another black man.
An investigator said the suspect told him he had met Mr Vincent at a restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 3.
Mr O’Neill, who is the boss of Thai Gardens restaurant in the Umalas area of Bali, is understood to have previously lived in Thailand for 10 years.
The Foreign Office was unable to comment on the incident.