Friom Andrew Drummond, Bangkok
July 20 2009
For Irish Daily Mail
Link www.kingpower.com
Irish Mail n Sunday
The owners of the Duty Free concession at Bangkok airport have uploaded video which they claim shows an Irish scientist presenting just one of two items she had taken from shelves, before she fled Thailand on shoplifting charges.
And the company says it was right to prosecute Dr. Ashie Norris, 41, because although she claimed she had paid for two Bobbi Brown cosmetic items she only had a receipt for one.
The video presented by King Power on their website at the weekend, however shows only blurry images of a woman at a distant counter. It does appear there was only one item on the counter but the video made available is so distorted it is not possible to be sure either way.
Dr. Ashie Norris insists the video does not show whether she brought one or two items to the till.
King Power insists that when their security staff stopped Dr. Norris. “She removed her personal plastic bag from her luggage. This contained two pieces of Bobbi Brown cosmetics’
However, if the ‘personal plastic bag’ referred to is King Power’s plastic bag which it gives to all shoppers with the company logo, then by their own admission King Power staff packed and closed this bag themselves.
Dr. Norris fled Bangkok on July 4th with her husband Dr. Ronan Loftus, 42, after she was arrested, detained overnight, and then bailed on a shoplifting charge in a case which could have taken a year to get to court had she pleaded not guilty.
At the time Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport was involved in a scandal involving the shaking down of foreigners caught shoplifting for thousands of Euros. King Power have denied any involvement saying they cannot control what happens to cases after they are passed on to Thai police.
In Bangkok it has been nicknamed the airport ‘ Monopoly scam’ not so much because of the high amounts of money involved but the fact that victims or perpetrators could buy ‘Get out of jail’ cards to escape airport shoplifting charges. These ‘cards’ were letters issued by the local prosecutor and police.
Dr. Norris, from Churchtown, Dublin, claims she took both items to the counter and paid by credit card. It was not until she looked closely at her receipt after her arrest that she realised she had only be charged for one item. The item she paid for was a Bobbi Brown Lip tint. The item for which she had not been charged was a Bobbi Brown eyeliner gel worth 18.87 Euros.
“I just remember signing my credit card slip. I did not notice the total.” She was arrested after she left the shop.
“They were shouting at me. ‘You! You! You go jail six months!’ I did not know what they were talking about. They took the eyeliner off me and started waving it in my face. I said I had paid for it, but when I looked at the receipt it was only a receipt for 576 baht (12 Euros) for the Bobby Brown lipstick.”
“They took me to the airport police station and then to a police station outside the airport. It was terrifying. The cell was filthy and stank and was full of mosquitoes. I paced the cell all night. I did not want to sit or lie down.”
King Power have not been shy to place other videos on the internet of alleged shoplifters, including one of a British couple who said they had to pay the equivalent of £8000 to a Sri Lankan fixer who was working with the police and local courts. Its not known how many people have paid off but the Sri Lankan has admitted to dealing with over 100 cases.
Stephen Ingram and Xi Lin denied stealing a Givenchy wallet in April this year and said this week from that they planned to return to Bangkok to fight in the courts to get their money back.
They say they will contest the video which appears to show Xi Lin placing the wallet in her shoulder bag while Stephen Ingram looked on.
“The threat was that unless we paid the cash we would be in jail a very long time just waiting for the case to come up. It was basic extortion” said Mr. Ingram.
King power’s managing director Sombat Dechakanichpul said in a statement that Dr. Norris entered the shop in question on the evening of June 25 “After some time she proceeded to the cashier counter and presented one Bobbi Brown Lip tint for payment and left the shop.
“Meanwhile our sales staff had noticed that one Bobbi Brown eye-liner gel was missing from the display shelf where Ms. Norris had been.
“The security staff then proceeded to review the CCTV….Ms Norris was clearly visible on camera testing various products and then proceeding to offer one item to the cashier for payment.”
Dr. Norris, a scientist working for Marine Harvest of Letterkenny, but originally from Greenshill, Kilkenny, has not talked about her arrest since returning to Dublin.
Prior to fleeing Thailand she and her husband, Ronan, 43, a director of the Dublin company IdentiGen, who flew from Dublin with their one year old son Aran, to be at her side, said they had received consular advice and spoken directly with the Irish Ambassador to Malaysia Eugene Hutchinson.
Although the British Embassy has placed an advisory on their websites warning of ‘high fines’ for shoplifting and unclear areas of demarcation in airport shops, the Irish DFA has not.
The DFA merely warns of what could happen to people if they import more than their quota of cigarettes and drink.
“A number of tourists have been detained and fined for attempting to bring cigarettes into the country and have reported that they were very distressed by their experiences.”