Andrew Drummond

on March 22, 2010

. 0 Comments

This is a blog only

I have been a journalist for, well donkeys’ years, and don’t think I have been compelled to report on a suicide, though I may have written about some star or starlet overdosing.
But here in Thailand the Pattaya Daily News is continually and distastefully breaking new ground in this area, no matter who it is apparently.
Take this from today’s Pattaya Daily News about a Swede who has allegedly attempted suicide (presumably after reading yesterday’s issue)
“At the scene, room 11 on the third floor, police discovered Mr. Golane Miggale [47] (also reported as Mr. Yoraw Andersson [42]) a Swedish national, standing in his room covered in blood”.
Que? What? Vas? Va? Ursäkta? Excuse me?
This gets very complicated when four separate Pattaya newspapers are reporting on the same incident with scores of different names.
Getting the names right in stories used to be up there in the, well, it used to be the number one priority. Of course maybe the PDN are just throwing in a couple of made up names, because they really should not be reporting on his stuff - unless of course they are covering up an attempted murder - well at least until it gets to the level of Swedes on the Costa del Sol in the Seventies.
Apparently there were so many Swedes falling off balconies that Swedish police went themselves to investigate. The story goes that a Swedish policeman then fell off a balcony during a party. Nah. I don’t believe it.

Andrew Drummond cleared in Thai ‘MacMafia’ libel trials

Published

Link to Society of Editors

on March 16, 2010

in Others

. 40 Comments

BY ANDREW CHANT, Bangkok

link to Press Gazette

Scots sex club kings lose fight to have brave journalist jailed

March 15 2010
A British journalist, who exposed the activities of two Scots – nicknamed the ‘Gay MacMafia’- in the Thai sex resort of Pattaya, has been cleared of two cases of criminal libel after a nine year court battle.
Freelance correspondent Andrew Drummond, 57, former correspondent of ‘The Observer’ and London ‘Times’, was cleared of libeling James Lumsden, 59, from Falkirk, who with his partner Gordon May, 67, from Edinburgh, was one of the biggest foreign players in the resort’s gay sex industry.
Drummond, also a Scot, from Edinburgh, and former bureau chief of the News of the World in Scotland, wrote a series of articles describing the misfortunes that befell Britons who were encouraged to go into business with Lumsden and May.
In April 1990, Iain Macdonald, 28, the son of a former Provost of Inverness, died in a fire at the Ambiance Hotel in Pattaya, owned by Lumsden & May, just one month after he had inexplicably bequeathed his £250,000 inheritance in 50 per cent of May and Lumsden’s business -’Boyz Boyz Boyz’ club and the Ambiance Hotel -to Gordon May’s boyfriend – a Thai male a-go-go dancer.
The will was illegal, because it was signed by the beneficiary. The male a go-go dancer got nothing, but Iain’s mother, Eileen MacDonald, never got the money back anyway, wrote Drummond.

Jim Lumsden as an 'artiste' - File photo Pattaya Gay Festival

A second businessman Kevin Quill, 39, from Bradford, Yorkshire, invested over £300,000 in a business called Patika Ltd. with May and Lumsden which, was also a hotel and bar.
Quill was arrested in 2000 by Pattaya Police after leaving the Ambiance Hotel. When police searched his luggage they found 170 cartons of contraband Benson & Hedges cigarettes. In one packet in one carton they found nearly 100 methamphetamine tablets.
After being refused bail, Kevin Quill was removed as managing director of the company and was replaced by May. His computer was wiped of all his financial records, and his apartment was stripped and rented out by his partners, wrote Drummond.
Quill was subsequently jailed for six years for drugs possession. The British Consul at the time, Deryck Fisher, wrote a letter, stating that the Assistant Police Commissioner Noppadol Somboonsap* in Bangkok, had admitted that Quill was framed. But no consular official gave evidence at the court.
The Appeal Court judges, Seramee Sirimankarak, Sittisak Wanachkij, and Ariya Navintum ruled: “The defendant was doing his job as a journalist, making facts public for foreigners doing business in Thailand. There is nothing defamatory in what he wrote.”

Marwaan Macan-Markar, president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand said:“We welcome these two court rulings in favour of Andrew Drummond, particularly since the alleged libels involved were criminal offences under existing Thai law..
“The verdicts demonstrate a fundamental respect for investigative reporting in the public interest. This is a good day for journalism and the law in Thailand.”

Gordon May

Andrew Drummond’s original reports were printed in London and Glasgow, but James Lumsden, also a drag artist, chose not to sue in Britain but in Thailand which, he said, he considered his home, after the Bangkok Post printed two similar stories. Drummond was subsequently given two, two month, suspended prison sentences and fined a total of 80,000 baht.

The Bangkok Post ap0logised in print to Lumsden blaming Drummond for the alleged libels.

Andrew Drummond, an award winning journalist, from Edinburgh and educated at The Abbey, Fort Augustus said: “ I’m of course very pleased. My thanks must go to Steve Turner former President of the BAJ for his never ending support and encouragement and my colleagues on newspapers in the UK and their bosses who helped pay my expenses.

“I’m proud to say that there wasn’t national newspaper group in the UK which did not contribute and then of course there were the scores of individuals both there and here.

“The judgments in my favour will please the victims and their relatives, but they are small consolation for the devastation these people have suffered”.

‘There are obviously issues to be resolved”.

Link ‘Fighting for Justice’

Lumsden (centre) as himself with others, not themselves. Pic: Pattaya Times

*Andrew Drummond

” Police Lt.General Noppadol Somboonsap, ( now retired) regarded as a man of integrity by members of FRANC in Bangkok, kindly drove down to Pattaya to give evidence at my trial for which I remain very grateful, and also to guys like Dominic Faulder at the FCCT, and my gay friends down in Pattaya, who continually keep me informed”.

FRANC - Foreign Anti-Nartcotics Committee - basically a working, and a ’once in a while’ drinking committee, for foreign police, and customs liaison officers in Bangkok, which would include RCMP, FBI, DEA, Deutsche Bundespolizei, UK Serious Organised Crime Agency, Australian Federal Police, NZ Police, Swedish Police (representing Scandinavia) and others from Asia.

THE VICTIMS

Iain Macdonald a few days before his death. His mother made an affidavit

Kevin Quill, in and out of jail, but from day one, British officials knew he was no drugs user

Hua Hin Property News - Briton, who fought back, beaten ‘close to death’

Published

on March 10, 2010

. 44 Comments

FROM ANDREW DRUMMOND
BANGKOK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10 2010

Keith Burbage wanted his money back

This is the face of British retired executive Keith Burbage. The former director of ‘The Stationery Office’ was beaten after pulling out of a house purchase deal in Thailand.
Burbage, 56, now retired, had decided to fight back after losing a ₤40,000 deposit on a ₤200,000 new house in the ‘upmarket’ resort of Hua Hin, 100 miles south of Bangkok.
His beating comes after another retired house-buyer was paralysed for the rest of his life after being gunned down outside his ‘dream home’.
Today Burbage said’: “I am in hiding and in fear for my life. I am a victim of a property fraud, but here if you fight back you can die.”
Burbage, said he survived because passers-by came to his aid as he was being beaten with what appeared to be a baseball bat. He says he has little confidence in the police.
Witnesses say his attacker, who arrived in a black car, had been waiting for hours.
Burbage, former Managing Director (Services) for the TSO, quit his Fulham home three years ago taking early retirement.
In Hua Hin, where the King of Thailand has his summer palace here, ₤200,000 would have bought him a luxury house with pool, and, to Burbage it seemed paradise.
The resort boasts top quality spas, miles and miles of white sand beach fringed by coconut palms, some of the best golf courses in Thailand, and many trendy restaurants.
“I was captivated by it,” he said.
But what is not mentioned in the glossy brochures, is that the ‘ retirement’ property business has been invaded by down market ‘businessmen’ from Britain and Europe. The only thing they have in common is that none have been in the property business before and many have a colourful past.
“International mafia targets foreigner who was suing over land deal” was the headline on the Thai language Hua City News last week when Burbage was found in a pool of blood outside the white gates of the condominium he was renting.

Burbage attacked at the gates of this condo

This story never made the local English language press Hua Hin Today and the Hua Hin Observer, both are owned by foreign property developers.
Today (Wed) Burbage is suing for the return of his cash in the local provincial court: “I am trying to work out how to get to the court without being ambushed on the way. I am in fear for my life,” he said.
He had put down the deposit with a European developer, only to find out later he had been palmed off with a home on a different plot 500 square metres smaller. He asked for his money back. The company refused and said Burbage: “I was warned not to mess with people with connections.

“There is nobody protecting people from the foreign mafia here, least of all the police. The investigation is going nowhere,” he added.

Donald Whiting now paralysed

Donald Whiting, 65, an ex-US marine is also in hiding with his partner Dolly Samson.
First Whiting’s car was firebombed, then he was gunned down outside his home, after he publicly complained about his property developer, not the same as Burbage’s.
Napatsorn Oxley, known as Sarah, the Thai wife of British property developer Darren Oxley, has been charged with hiring assassins to kill him.
Police have also arrested the three would be assassins, who, police claimed, said she paid the equivalent of £600 pounds to fire-bomb Whiting’s car and £2,000 pounds to kill him. He was shot five times outside his home. In hiding Whiting is paralysed and needs 24 hour care.
Those who allegedly plotted to kill him have got bail and he has no witness protection.
“It’s a living nightmare,” he said. “Those with money can just walk free in Thailand.”

Darren Oxley

Darren Oxley is on the run from Sheffield Crown Court. He fled bail in 2001, on charges of conspiracy to supply drugs.
Another British property group ran by South Londoners promoted the Hua Hin Country Club, using the figure of England and Chelsea footballer Joe Cole, and took over ₤1 million in deposits off plan.
The Hua Hin Country Club is still being promoted on the internet….and still not one brick has been laid.
A British Embassy spokesman advised potentional property buyers in Thailand to heed the Foreign Office Travel Advisory.
“People have been sold properties which do not exist, have trouble getting ownership papers, and in once case we know the same property was sold to 12 different clients. Going through the courts can take years.”

Thai angel? ‘Aw, Haud your whisht!’ - say Scots

Published

on March 3, 2010

in Others

. 10 Comments

This is a blog only

Two weeks or so ago STV – Scottish Television - went with a story about how a 64-yr-old Scots engineer Allan Hyne – had been abandoned to die from an unknown virus in Thailand in a pauper’s hospital with nobody to take care of him.
The television station interviewed his son and daughter, but not his Scottish wife, and on screen we were shown a bill of over 500,000 Thai baht (approx ten thousand pounds) with the suggestion the family were paying it.
They also complained that they faced costs of up to 200,000 UK pounds to have their father, still in a coma, flown back to Scotland.
This could have, I suppose, been a real enough scenario, except medivac flights are a lot cheaper.
But nobody on STV, or at the Press & Journal in Aberdeen, or the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh, made any attempt to check out whether any of this was true…..And not much was.
In fact Allan, the Chief Engineer at Grampian Food’s plant in Lam Luka, north of Bangkok, was being taken care of, seemingly to the best of her ability, by his engineer girlfriend/partner, Dtim, aged 54.

Allan with Dtim when he was first admitted

Through the most awful twist of fate, just a month into retirement, he had been struck down by Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito borne disease which is very rare, but not unknown, but which can be fatal.
He had NEVER been in a pauper’s hospital. His insurance had paid the original bill at a private hospital in Ramkhamhaeng, Bangkok, and the bill at the second private hospital, Ake Pathom, was shared between a local company policy and Dtim. It was a private hospital. She made up the difference.

Allan & Dtim with Scots family in better days in the Carribean

In the meantime, and we have this confirmed by doctors and nurses at the Ake Pathom hospital in Rangsit, Dtim took a month off work to study nursing full time, or more specifically how to nurse Allan and work all the complicated life supporting gadgets.

Allan’s doctor and nurses also say that his recovery must be due at least in part to Dtim’s devotion.
She also built a fully equipped hospital room in the front lounge of the couple’s home in Bangkok. She took him home last Sunday.
So set this off against the family’s remarks in Scotland.

They rightly point out that Allan is already married. They say he was taken out of the hospital without their permission. They say he is a person trapped within his own body. And they are rightly suspicious because Dtim wanted cash.

Discharged and returning to his home in Bangkok

The family, perhaps understandably, senses a typical rip-off. And to be honest so common are these rip-offs in Thailand that it is always the first possibility to be considered.

To the family it is immaterial that Dtim had looked after Allan for the last five, or seven years, depending on who you talk to.
The family of course appear to have lost their father, brother, uncle…to a Thai woman, who appears to have taken him from them in the twilight years of his life. ‘Maybe she wants his inheritance?’ may have been running through their minds.
Dtim does want cash, she admits. She wants the family to help with costs for the care in Thailand, or if not, pay for Allan’s medical evacuation flight back to Scotland. She says she needs 35,000 Thai baht a month to provide nursing care for him. But that, she says, is all.

Allan spoonfed in better days

Although she is an engineer, her Thai salary would not come anywhere near matching that of Allan before he retired last year. She has, she says, had to sell ‘the BMW’ to pay the costs so far. If she was being Machiavellian I guess there would be no need to sell the BMW to furnish a private hospital ward in their sitting room.

Allan and Dtim before his retirement

Anyway our video unit duly transmitted some material back to Scottish Television which was used yesterday and I updated the P & J so that Scots could at least hear what Dtim and the doctor had to say. It was broadcast though with the error that Dtim was demanding 7,000 pounds not 700 a month, which will I guess have set the pipes a-skirling again.

The Press and Journal weirdly alluded to ‘reports coming from Thailand’ which sounded a bit Dickensian, and as if a pigeon had just come in through the window in Lang Stracht, whereas we file direct into their newsdesk and talk on the telephone.
Personally I was touched. I don’t detect all scams. I have even been fooled myself. But the tears in the eyes of Dtim, her mother, and daughter-in-law, on getting Allan home again were real enough, though cynics will say those eyes were seeing pound notes and dollar bills.
Because of her strong accent Dtim does actually sound sometimes like a character from ‘Little Britain’ talking about ‘Khun Dudwee’, but it comes across pretty clear that she wants the best for Allan Hyne.

Now there is a massive gap in this story. This could be down to the vast communication gap. Something, indeed many things, may have happened that none of us know about. So I am not even going to begin to think about sitting in judgment.

Allan’s son complains that whenever he called the hospital people just put down the phone on him. Anyone who has seen the ‘Trawlermen’ will understand that the Scottish North East accent sometimes takes a little bit of comprehending, which is maybe why.

So if I were a caring member of Allan Hyne’s family in the North East of Scotland and did not speak Thai, I would forget about the media and the Foreign Office and head to the nearest Thai restaurant, get hold of a member of staff, and get her to work the phones for me for a while, to find out what really is going on.

Allan Hyne's Garden nook

There are over 100 Thai restaurants in Scotland. Several in Aberdeen, 46 miles, but one in Inverness, one of my old haunts. Ok, its about 60 odd miles, from Buckie. But in Inverness they speak very clear English….. clearer in fact than the average English person does. No ‘foos yer doos?’ or ‘fit ya bins’!

That way we do not have ‘Oor Wullie!’ talking to ‘Ting Tong Macadangdang’.
At the moment it seems like the Scottish family want Dtim to sell her Thai home so she can continue to support Allan. Something, it seems, she is prepared to do.

Dtim of course has no legal claim on Allan Hyne (senior), who has a home in Scotland and who also banks there. He, as the Scots family point out, has a legal wife already.
As for Dtim taking care of Allan in Scotland?

Some how I do not think that’s really on the cards. Who will be her sponsor?

The 400,000 baht converted ward in Allan's Bangkok sitting room

“She think’s she’s coming to Scotland. Aye that’ll be right!” was the reply when I called one of the family homes this week. This means roughly: ‘Tell her where she can put her crummock!’………or, er, ‘No she isn’t!”
Anyway Dtim, for what you have done so far for a, dare I say it, fellow Scot.
‘Thanks a million and lets hope Allan continues to recover.’

Happily back in his Bangkok home or 'Help ma boab. I've been kidnapped'

Scot saved by the hand of a Thai angel

Published

on February 28, 2010

Link to Sunday Mail Scotland

. 6 Comments

FROM ANDREW DRUMMOND, BANGKOK, FEBRUARY 27 2010

A SCOTS engineer said to have weeks to live has stunned doctors by making a recovery - helped by his Thai partner.

Allan Hyne , 64, is to be discharged from a hospital in Thailand having got over a brain bug, which left him in a coma.

Last week his family, from Buckie, Banffshire, claimed they would have to leave him to die in Thailand because they could not afford to fly him home.

But the Thai woman who helped nurse him has now told of her love for “the funny Scottish man” who has been her companion for seven years - and how he got better.

Patchararawadee Oogrit pledged: “I’ll stick by him to the end, wherever that may be.”

Allan Hyne with Dtim at the first ICU

The engineer said Allan was suffering from Japanese encephalitis but the worst is now over. She added: “When he got sick, I cried every day but the doctor said maybe Allan will have good luck and recover.

“I look after him every day so I know he’s getting better. Sometimes he smiles and I know he understands.

“He always told me he wanted to retire and live in Thailand.”

Allan, who worked for Grampian Country Foods, was struck down with the mosquito borne disease just a month after taking retirement last year.

He was put into hospital in Ramkhamhaeng, Bangkok, but yesterday was getting final treatment at the Ake Pathum Hospital in Nakhon Nayok, 30 miles north of the capital.

Doctors say Allan will not be able to talk again and are not sure how much more of a recovery he will make. Dr Naratapong Sangtong said: “He has got better. Some patients continue improving, others level off.”

Part of his treatment has been paid for by the Thai government because he had local insurance. The rest, including a private nurse, is being financed by his partner.

Patchararawadee said she was distressed to hear of Scottish TV and press reports saying Allan was being left for dead and there was nobody taking care of him.

Allan’s daughter Dawn was quoted as saying he was in a pauper’s hospital. And his son Allan said he would need between £120,000 and £200,000 to fly his dad home.

Last night, his son added: “He is not married to this woman. He did live with her in Thailand but he is still married to my mother.

“The British Consulate told my sister in no uncertain terms on Friday he was not to be removed from hospital and I would certainly be concerned about it if that was the case.

“Why remove someone from a hospital where they are receiving free treatment? “He would be better offback in Britain and back with his family.”

Patchararawadee said: “I am paying for a respirator and full-time nurse but my money will run out soon. Allan is not able to sign over power of attorney so no funds can be released for his treatment.

“I am happy to bring their father home to Scotland. If the family can release his money, I’m sure a flight can be arranged.

“I would continue to take care of him anywhere, even though he said he would like to die here.

“I’m happy because he’s still with me. I don’t care how difficult it is to look after him, I’ll do it.”

Jet ski thugs ‘ a disgrace to Thailand’ says injured ex-Para

Published

on February 22, 2010

. 18 Comments

First the Royal Marines: - Now retired ‘Para’ is struck down in Thailand’s jet ski war

From ANDREW DRUMMOND , BANGKOK, February 20 2010

A 61-yr-old retired paratrooper from Walsall has become the latest victim in a ‘jet ski war’ which has claimed hundreds of tourist victims in Thailand.
Last night David Marshall, a former Sergeant in (2 Para) 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, told how he fought off five youths, after he refused to give in to an extortion attempt in the resort of Pattaya, 100 miles east of Bangkok.
He was attacked after Thai thugs tried to pull a well worn tourist scam that their jet ski had been damaged and demanded compensation.

Former Sergeant in '2 Para' David Marshall

“There were five of them on me. They got in a couple of punches in my eye and mouth, but it took them some time to get me to the ground before they kicked me and ran off. I think I acquitted myself alright” he said.
Added Mr. Marshall, who ran his own construction firm after leaving the Parachute Regiment: “These 20-30 year olds were a bunch of cowards and a disgrace to Thailand.”
The incident at the weekend follows widespread, threats, some at knifepoint, and extortion of tourists in Thailand’s other resort areas of Koh Samui and Phuket . Victims have had to pay up to 1,500 pounds each time.

Thai Jet ski man and Royal Marine Police Sergeant face off in Phuket

Last year, on the holiday island Phuket a Group of Royal Marines of 40 Commando from HMS Bulwark faced a gun as a Thai jet-ski hirer extorted over 600 pounds from them, claiming loss of earnings and repair work. The Thai ‘enforcer’ admitted he had to pay 20% to police.

Marine policeman Matt Turner

Royal Marine Police Sergeant Tim Wright described the Thai jet ski boss as ’a two bit swindler’ and in the British TV series ‘Big Trouble in Thailand’ and Marine Policeman Mat Turner went on to describe how men on shore leave were being ‘ripped off everywhere, hiring jet-skis, taxis, tuk-tuks’. He said the rip-off were organised ‘as if by criminal gangs’.

After orders from the Minister of the Interior Phuket’s Governor stepped in and all jet ski businesses were ordered to insure their boats so they need not get the cash back from tourists. Tourists now claim they are being scammed for ‘loss of earnings’ while the boat is being repaired.

And in one three month period on the island of Koh Samui, consular officials recorded 150 such cases of extortion which included alleged damage to land buggies. The Foreign Office has already issued a Travel Advisory warning of the dangers of renting jet skis in Thailand and warnings are also running on the website TripAdvisor.

Fraudsters, usually working with the co-operation of local police, force high payments out of tourists for alleged damage – on pain of going to jail.
David Marshall was on holiday in Pattaya with his son, Darren, 37, and a friend . They hired three jet skis and they closely examined their jet skis before taking them.
“The day before we had seen a tourist getting scammed. So when we hired them we checked them out very carefully. As we looked at the bottom of Darren’s jet ski, the owner must have put his hand over some damage as he held it up.
“When we got back he pointed it out and we said it was definitely not from us and I told them I was having none of that nonsense,” he said.
The attack came as they walked away.
“My face looks like I’ve been in a car crash, but luckily there’s no serious long term damage – apart from a broken tooth”.

David Marshall said that, while he had been to the police once by pre-arrangement, the senior policeman involved had forgotten to turn up. He planned to go again (Monday). “Apart from this incident we have had a very good holiday.”

Birdman of Dagenham faces Himalayan grounding

Published

on February 18, 2010

. 0 Comments

NB: Parahawking continues in Nepal despite the threat. For up to date information contact Scott Mason through his website - www.parahawking.com

Link to Daily Mail

Link to Evening Standard

Pictures: Scott Mason

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok, February 17 2010

Londoner Scott Mason, the ‘Birdman of Dagenham’, who runs a vulture rescue centre in the Himalayas, today faced being shut down by the Nepalese government after a press campaign in the capital Katmandu.
Mason, 38, speaking from Pokhara, Nepal: “It’s very depressing news. They say I am operating illegally. It’s seems there is resentment and the government has said they are closing me down. If that happens all my birds will die, and very slowly.”
scott-mason-birdman01 The East London former graphics designer and falconer has achieved world-wide fame over the last nine years first for his work with his ‘Himalayan Raptor Rescue’ – and Para-hawking.
In his Para-hawking venture tourists can para-glide through the Himalayas with kites and Egyptian vultures, which he has trained to fly with them, swooping, taking tidbits, and even sitting on the crossbars.
The experience has been the subject of many films and television documentaries and featured as one of FHM magazines ‘Things to do before you die’

Scott Mason with Egyptian vultures

But now Nepal’s Minister for Forest & Soil Conservation Deepak Bokhara has announced that Mason’s operation will be banned. “We will stop Mason,” he said.
The Ministerial announcement came after a month long ‘Mason Must Go!’ campaign by the Republica newspaper in Katmandu.
The newspaper claimed that Mason was illegally holding endangered species and was outraged that he charged 120 Euros for para-hawking with the birds.
scott-mason-birdman02 “This is animal abuse and is forbidden by the country’s law in every sense of the term.” The newspaper asked “Who has let this foreigner indulge in such activities?”
Scott’s Himalayan Raptor Rescue is a partner of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Vulture Rescue, and Bird Conservation Nepal. It runs the only bird rescue centre in Nepal.
Hum Guring, Chief Executive Officer of Bird Conservation Nepal has meanwhile called for the setting up of an official Bird Rescue Centre which Nepal does not yet have.
“We understand the Himalayan Raptor Centre has been concerned with the saving of Raptors and we join hands (with it) to save our birds. The work of the Himalayan Raptor Centre is much appreciated and is also an important source of income for sustaining the rescue works and to support vulture conservation in Nepal.”
Said Scott: “We have black kites and Egyptian vultures which we use in Para-hawking. They have not been captured. They have been raised as chicks after being abandoned.
“The others we rescue we treat and release into the wild. But if we release trained birds, which have been working with humans they will die. We work closely and help fund the BCN and also work with the RSPB. This will be a very sad day”. Flights he said would continue until he was notified officially by the Nepalese authorities.
Dr. Juliet Vickery, Head of International Research for the RSPB said she was concerned at the news but would withhold comment until she could contact Richard Cuthbert, Senior Conservationist Scientist and head of Vulture Rescue, who had worked with Mason, but who was currently in New Zealand.
“Scott Mason is probably right if he says the birds will die if released into the wild.”
Nepal toppled its monarchy in 2008 and after initially being ruled by a Maoist government is now ruled by a coalition led by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist Marxist Party of Nepal.

British ‘diplomatic note’ over possible abduction of Bangkok international school pupil

Published

on February 16, 2010

. 10 Comments

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok,

Monday February 15 2010

The British Foreign Office has issued a diplomatic note to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs covering a letter expressing fears that an attempt made be made to abduct an 11-yr-old pupil at an international school in Bangkok.

The move followed a complaint by John Goodman, 50, the Bangkok based ASEAN Regional Director of Ogilvy & Mather and Asia-Pacific President of Ogilvy Action, that British High Commission officials in Malaysia did nothing last month, after his daughter was abducted by his mother and held inside the Embassy of the Republic of Guinea in Kuala Lumpur

Mr. Goodman had won custody in the British High Court last October with the agreement of the mother, Guinean born Kaissa Traore, 40. However she ran off with her daughter during a visit to Singapore authorised by the High Court in London, and then crossed the border to Malaysia.

Mr.Goodman, from Liverpool, flew to Kuala Lumpur on January 10th to get his daughter back. He said he had received a letter from Kaissa Traore’s London lawyer stating: “ My client will not return ***** to your client unless there is a financial settlement, and if there is no financial settlement before the end of January she will take ***** to the Republic of Guinea”.

It was followed by emails from Kaissa Traore stating: “The new President of Guinea will inform the UK authority that any UK court is invalid. The lawyers are colonial, support apartheid , are limited mentally, and cannot understand slavery has now become a crime”.

Mr. Goodman claimed that when he went to the British High Commission officials told him there was nothing they could do.

Mr. Goodman said he was left alone to deal with the threat that his daughter would taken to the impoverished and corrupt country and he would never see her again, unless he paid out the equivalent of US$1million.

Armed guard in Thonglor Bangkok

At a meeting on January 21 at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton Hotel overseen by the Republic of Guinea’s Commercial Attaché he agreed to pay. He put down the first US$10,000 and fled back to Bangkok with his daughter where he put her under armed guard. He does not intend to pay any more.

Speaking at his home in Thonglor, Bangkok, Mr. Goodman said: “I regret to say the assistance I was given by the Foreign Office and its staff in Kuala Lumpur was less than useless.
“At the end of the day an 11-yr-old British girl was held for ransom in a foreign embassy against her will. The threat was that she would be taken to West Africa and never be seen again by her father and grandparents and friends unless I paid the equivalent of US$1million.
“This threat was enforced by diplomats of a West African country, which is almost a failed state, and where corruption is rife. Yet not one British diplomat was prepared to help or could make a decision.
“My lawyers had to go back to the High Court and secure an order that they did so. But even then officials told me they could not get a letter to the Guinean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, because the Guinea Embassy fax was down.
“I wonder if these people have heard of messengers.

“My daughter has lived with me for the last six years since Kiassa and I separated. That was the mother’s wish too. My daughter has never been a citizen of Guinea. She has only been there to visit, the last time when she was six, but then she needed a visa to do so. She has nothing in common with Guinea. She cannot speak the language.

“I believe the country does not even have an English language school. There has been rioting there and government troops have been firing on demonstrators.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Mr. Goodman has received consular assistance. We are not able to offer more detailed comment”.

Kaissa Taore, the mother

Kaissa Traore said: “It was not a kidnap. I told the father where his daughter was. I do not accept the High Court judgment. I did not go to the High Court. The British government refused me a visa, can you imagine? I’m a Mandingo and we are proud people and I’m the wife of a President of one of the world’s foremost companies. The matter is now in the hands of the government of the Republic of Guinea. My daughter is a citizen of Guinea”.
Traore’s father, a politician, was one of the founding fathers of the troubled post French-colonial Guinea, currently run by a military junta.
Guinea, though rich in natural resources is one of the poorest countries in the world and most corrupt in Africa. It has been ruled by a series of military juntas which have been accused of committing widespread atrocities on the people.
On January On 21 January 2010 the military junta appointed Jean-Marie Dore as Prime Minister of a six-month transition government, leading up to promised elections.

British drug baron’s luxury Thai life on the run - updated

Published

on February 7, 2010

Link to Sunday Mirror ‘British drug baron’s luxury life

. 63 Comments

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok, Feb 7 2009

Pictures by Andrew Chant and Hua Hin News

Darren Oxley

A wealthy Briton who skipped bail during his high profile trial for drugs dealing has been able to live the ‘high life’ in Thailand due to incompetence and bungling by police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Darren Oxley, who was described in court as ‘violent’ and a ‘man you don’t mess with’, and also ‘with considerable amounts of money’ has been living undisturbed like a Lord in his tropical mansion in a beach resort.
Today Oxley, 42, should be in jail in Britain, for his last role as the leader of a drugs empire which pushed Ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines in clubs in England.

Oxley House, Hua Hin Darren's home away from, well, er, jail

But while British authorities can track down parking offenders to Europe they have done nothing to reign in this high profile criminal even though there is a working extradition treaty.
While supposedly on the run the British Embassy in Bangkok has happily handed him a new passport to continue his life in the sun in a palatial mansion in Hua Hin, a town known as ‘The Royal Resort’ 150 miles south of Bangkok.
Nine members of his gang were jailed for a total of 60 years in 2001 at Sheffield Crown Court for dealing drugs in clubs like the town’s ‘Republic’.
But Oxley, who stood in the dock with them, was now nowhere to be seen when it came to sentencing. He never bothered to hang around. After skipping bail he was already in Thailand where he bought a Lamborghini, Bentley and Range Rover and took a Thai wife.
A bench warrant issued by the judge became worthless, because he had already fled the coop.

Darren Oxley -right- near the Whitings home in Hua Hin

Oxley has since been living the good life and laughing at British police. In Thailand he set up a building company and called ‘Oxley Homes’ in Hua Hin. The company has now been linked to a fire-bombing, and attempted murder.

Donald Whiting now paralysed

The major victim is former US Marine Don Whiting, 65, who bought a home from Oxley and then complained about being defrauded over water bills on his property. Whiting’s car was firebombed in July 2008 and then on October 24th 2008 he was gunned down at his home. Whiting is paralysed from the waist down and will never walk again.
He took took six bullets. Four pierced his lungs and exited, one was removed from his stomach, and one is still embedded in his spine. He needs 24 hours a day medical attention.

Bullet lodged in Whiting's spine

The day after the shooting, claims Donald Whitting, nicknamed ‘Biff’, he was due to give evidence in five cases of fraud against Oxley in the court at the provincial capital of Prachuap Khiri Khan.
After the incident Thai police said they had issued warrants for the arrest of Oxley and his wife Janpen/Napatsorn Oxley, 32, and five days later on January 29th she was arrested at she tried to cross the border to Cambodia with the equivalent of 6000 pounds in her handbag.
She was taken back to Hua Hin where she denied being involved and was released without charge to return to nearby ‘Oxley House’. Police meanwhile attempted quite successfully to keep a lid on the scandal by asking local newspapers to control their forums, which had drawn out angry comments from local foreign residents. They claimed the comments could interfere with their enquiries.
But in October 29th after intervention by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva three people were arrested for attempted murder and they named Oxley’s wife as the person who commissioned it.

Two cousins and gunman in white T-shirt - Hua Hin News

Cousins Yuthawan Areesawat, 36, and Sarat Areesawat, 41 from Chumpon, South Thailand, and Eakanan Jitmahima, from Pathum Thani, Central Thailand, admitted they had attempted the murder of Whiting with a .38 after being paid 200,000 Thai baht (just 4000 pounds) by Mrs. Oxley at one of her other homes in Hua Hin. Police easily tracked down the money transfer.
The men also admitted to setting fire to Donald Whiting’s car for a fee of 600 pounds.
But Janpen, who apparently had never spoken to Donald Whiting, or his partner Dolly Damson, Vice Chancellor of Stamford International University in Thailand, refused to implicate her husband.

Janpen Oxley cuts a smart appearance at Bangkok South Criminal Court. On a conspiracy to murder charge she is likely to still be on bail in years to come

Donald Whiting is dumbstruck. He said: “The only person I had a row with was Darren Oxley. He was threatening me. He told me some harm could come to me. I could prove he was cheating me and was due in court the day after the shooting to testify against him.
“Sure his wife is guilty but I am sure she would never have ordered my shooting without her husband’s say so. Foreign builders and estate agents have been holding expatriates to ransom in Hua Hin. Many have lost their live savings because of scams.
“How can this Briton Darren Oxley even be allowed to live in Thailand? I have written to the Crown Prosecution Service and police and get nothing from them. The British Embassy will tell me nothing.”
Janpen Oxley, who entered a monastery and changed her name to Napatsorn while on bail, has not implicated her husband. It is difficult for foreigners to get bail on murder charges. The Thai legal system can be cumbersome and dysfunctional given the right circumstances. All the Thai defendants, bar the actual shooter Eakanan have got bail.
The trial could last over two years, sitting just one day a month. If Mrs. Oxley, also known as ‘Sarah’ is acquitted she can appeal and her bail extended. If she loses her appeal than she can appeal to the Supreme Court – the appeals process can take as long as eight years.
Said Dolly Samson, 62: “We want Janpen to feel the full weight of the law. We want Darren Oxley brought to justice. I am concerned for Donald’s health and whether he will be around to see justice is done.”

Gunmen Eakanan did not make it to the special court

Despite intervention by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva for a speedy resolution of the case, when the Sunday Mirror attended a special hearing for Donald Whiting and Dolly to give evidence at the Bangkok South Criminal Court, as they cannot travel, the hearing had to be adjourned for three months.
Everyone was there except the accused gunman. The prison authorities had forgotten to send the assassin Eakanan to face his accusers.
So what then did the British authorities do? In statements to the local press South Yorkshire Police claimed firstly that they were seeking to extradite Oxley and then that there were problems with extradition.
When we asked the Yorkshire Police under the Freedom Of Information Act whether they had actually tried to get Oxley back to the UK they refused to say either way, explaining: “To give a statement of the reasons why neither confirming nor denying is appropriate in this case, would itself involve the disclosure of exempt information, therefore under Section 17(4), no explanation can be given.
This should not be taken as an inference that the information you have requested, does or does not exist”.

The Sunday Mirror story

This is civil service double-speak meaning as this is an ongoing enquiry ‘we do not have to say anything’. This has left Donald Whiting puzzled as to how British justice works, let alone the Thai system.

Enquiries with the Thai authorities showed that there never ever been a request for extradition which was confirmed by the CPS, who have now destroyed Oxley’s file. This is despite a suggestion by the South Yorkshire Police force to the local press that the opposite was the case.

A CPS spokesman said: “Due to the type and age of the offence, the file on Oxley has been destroyed, in accordance with CPS policy on retention. Oxley left the country before sentencing, so should he return to the UK, he would be arrested and brought to court to be sentenced. There is no record of any steps taken to extradite Oxley. As there was no extradition started, the Thai authorities were not involved”.

Said wheelchair bound Donald Whiting: “It’s difficult to hold any respect for the British authorities. This says little for British justice or the reputation of the British police.”

Darren Oxley has strongly denied the allegations made against him. He insists he had nothing to do with the shooting of Donald Whiting.

“Donald Whiting had a case against my wife, but it was not due in court for a couple of months. He was actually suing another developer. I was never wanted in connection with the shooting of Donald Whiting. I have even been to police and they told me not to waste their time”.

(Donald Whiting admits he did in fact have issues with a Greek developer in Hua Hin)

“This is being exaggerated out of all proportion. I am being made to look like the Krays (an old London crime family of three brothers, who specialised in extortion, torture and murder, but who loved their mum, and donated to charity).

“As it stands I was not convicted in the British court and as such am still innocent. Yes, police may want to talk to me if I go back. But their case against me is weak. A lot of it is hearsay from other people in the dock.

“Further Donald Whiting has had problems with other builders and even tried to extort money from them, yet it is me who has been labelled the criminal.”

Meanwhile police in South Yorkshire are boasting ‘another significant fall in quarterly crime figures’.

Legal Note: This site has been updated and corrected where necessary. Everybody has of course a right of reply. In particular I have removed some of the details from Darren Oxley’s passport as I would not wish to be party to any crime or indeed for Darren Oxley to be the subject of crime. He wrote expressing his fear that he was ”wide open for anyone to use my details for anything such as fraud”.……

The newspaper you can trust would not say boo to a goose! Updated March 09

Published

on February 3, 2010

. 11 Comments

Blog at www.andrew-drummond.com

THOUSANDS OF IDIOTS DETECTED
Blog only

Knock! Knock! Anybody there?
They don’t get it do they. The total combined intellect of the Bangkok Post has not yet cottoned on to the fact that the GT-200 is a total hoax, as are the Sniffex, ADE651, and Alpha 6 bomb/drugs/ insurgent detectors which Thailand has bought by the cart-load.

I mean who would buy a machine, powered by a human and nothing else which can detect anything from drugs to explosives, or even a choc-ice if you programme the nonexistent chip! The only things these machines can detect are idiots.
And who would pay US$18,000 for each machine? Well, China, Thailand, Iraq, and Mexico for starters. Did I hear someone say ‘kickback mountain!’ Well,you could be forgiven. The recently arrested Jimbo, manufacturer of the ADE651, complained: ‘But I only got 11 million dollars!’ – of a US$80 million deal with Iraq – the rest, he said, went on commissions and training. Some commissions! Some training! But lets not apportion blame yet, says Prime Minister Abhisit.
So anyway out comes the Bangkok Post today and with a report by writers Anucha Charoenpo and King-oua Laohong. Yes it takes two of them to come out with this grey drivel. This after endless days of the paper quoting different experts as to how the machines really work.
“The cabinet is concerned about the detector’s reliability and consistency and invited soldiers, security experts and drugs officers to provide information on its use at its meeting yesterday.
The invited guests expressed satisfaction with the detectors, but the cabinet wanted more academic research to support their claims”.
It’s going to take them a week to find out what BBC Newsnight established with both the GT200 and ADE651 in about 3 minutes. While we are not going to take the matter forward with this sort of reporting, full marks to the Bangkok Post for its opinion poll, possibly one of the most nonsensical polls I have ever seen.

bangkokpostfool

It posed the question: ‘Do you think the devices should be tested?’
A staggering 33% said No. (the figure representing this group has lost only half his legs)
14 per cent said ‘Don’t know’ (the figure representing this group looks like he has been ripped in half by a claymore)
And only 53% said yes. (And this guy is fine)

So I guess we need diagrams to spell it out :-).
But look how mellow people are taking this while fellow citizens, soldiers and police, are being killed in south Thailand. It’s almost as if they do not care. But isn’t it sweet that according to the Bangkok Post 47 per cent of people questioned did not want an ‘end to their doubts’.

That’s easily solved. Just take out a subscription to the Bangkok Post!

Update Feb 15: Well since I wrote this. The Bangkok Post has been trundling along still not totally convinced. Well one writer in tjhe Post Database section called it an outright fraud, and a scientist rambled on about nothing, but clearly the editor does not read his own paper.

In Sunday’s Bangkok Post - well the splash actually - Pansak Siriruchatapong, the man who is supposed to take these machines apart and test them for the government is quoted as saying he cannot take them apart because the purchasers signed a confidentiality agreement!

GT-200 courtesy of Pantip Plaz dot com

The government therefore cannot disclose anything about how these machines (don’t) work.

You can’t make this up. However I suspect on this occasion the ‘foreign’ editor of the Sunday Bangkok Post is having a private joke.

And there’s more: “Jehrming Tohtayong a member of the ‘National Security Panel’ said members had discussed the prospects of holding laboratory tests, but said they were concerned this would violate the seller’s intellectual rights”

Some National Security Panel!

(Reminds me of the Danish prospective PM who was asked what he would do if his country was invaded. “Pick up the phone and surrender! No on second thoughts the Danish politician is a lot smarter)

Some intellectual rights!

Oh and here’s the link to the original BBC Newsnight report. The second report where the GT200 is taken apart has already been shown on Thai TV Channel 3. And a Thai military man has already admitted on Thai TV that there is nothing on the GT200.

So what’s happening in Britain, where Health and Safety issues mean that you cannot get an aspirin in some hotels, to Gary Bolton the boss of Global Technical which produces the GT200? Nothing at all it seems. So far he is laughing all the way to the bank…of the West Indies.

FOOTNOTE: In fairness to the Bangkok Post on March 7th 2010 Spectrum published a much fuller report concluding I guess that the GT200 does not work. Though of course in its ‘even handed way’ quoted several military who though it did. Buried in its report however was a quote from general Genera Pathompong who had taken a GT 200 apart and basically found nothing.

Ouch! First salvo in Pattaya newspaper war?

Published

on January 28, 2010

http://translate.google.com/

. 7 Comments

Blog Only(UPDATED)

Pattaya Times accused Pattaya People boss of involvement in ‘gold share scam’

Pattaya Daily News publishes link to ‘criminal record’ of Pattaya People boss

The first shots have been be fired in a Pattaya newspaper war. A new-comer on the scene, ‘The Pattaya Times’ engineered by an ubiquitous American called Drew Noyes - aka ‘Fringe Benefit’ - has accused Niels ‘Istedgade’ Colov publisher of the Pattaya People, and boss of Pattaya People TV as a man involved in a gold scam which has defrauded foreigners out of millions.

And then a couple of days ago the Pattaya Daily News, published links to a site, which identified Colov as a former pimp with convictions of living off immoral earning, unlawful coercion, vandalism and receiving stolen goods.

Colov is also the leader of the Foreign Police Volunteers in Pattaya.

At the end of its report of the death of Martin Frutin, 69, the Pattaya Daily News (which incidentally seems to have been alone in pointing out that the Scots millionaire and man about town, who hob-nobbed with Pattaya publishers and worked for Colov, also had a conviction for possessing child pornography) invited comments. ’Somchai’ posted the following links.

http://www.update.dk/cfje/lovbasen.nsf/ID/LB03872534
google translate here

The details about Niels Storm Martens Colov come in what purpots to be a Danish legal judgment on a case in which Colov sued two journalists for calling him a heroin trafficker and other horrible things like running pyramid scams. The journalists lost their case.

Lawyers for Colov are seen to admit on this site: “It is true that in 1970 he was convicted for violence, unlawful coercion, receiving stolen goods, vandalism and pimping in Vesterbro’s porn environment”.

This was in the 70s. Convictions, if any, are likely to be spent. (For the details one would have to go to BT, Ekstra Bladet , Jyllands Post or Politiken files.)

And indeed the lawyers could plead that now Mr. Colov was now an upstanding member of the community, charity giver, devout Buddhist, former Rotary club, President etc. His past was irrelevant.

Well bless his cotton socks. What a remarkable achievement. And, if any of this is true, what a tribute to Thailand and the power of Buddhism and vegetarianism.

They transformed, a man, who once may have been considered a foreign lowlife, into an upstanding benefactor of great achievements. Colov is a Buddhist vegetarian, a criminal to a police chief, a thief to a benfactor. Actually this is a remarkable news feature in itself. An addition to the ‘Reformed Club’. An excellent cleansing.

The Cop

Niels is also a Scout master and organises international scouting jamborees - the sort of places we needed to keep Frutin out of, guess.

But this is Pattaya where truth is all elusive. More than anywhere else these rags become the servants of their masters whims, opening doors to the local hierarchy and grovelling to police and judiciary. My library is full pictures of local editors sitting down to dine with people I would not go near with the proverbial barge pole, all taken from their ‘Social’ and ‘High Society’ pages!

Colov denies all the above allegations. And indeed there seems to be a conspiracy afoot.

And I have to state unequivocably that I am making no suggestion whatsoever that Neil Colov is up to any criminal activitity in Thailand, nor do I have any evidence of such. To Niels I say, the family resort Pattaya needs you to draw from your rich experiences and continue to contribute to the local community.

Nor indeed do I have personal evidence as to his former years in Denmark apart from some very faded newspaper cuttings.

Of course other people do not share this opinion, like for instance the ‘Pattaya Times’, who think he is involved in a massive gold shares fraud. More specifically they suggest he is a silent partner of Lance Shaw, an international confidence trickster who was scandalously released on bail at the end of last year by Pattaya Court. Shaw has openly boasted that he pays off the authorities, and taunts his victims. The Pattaya Times believes the death knell is ringing for the old time foreign criminals in Pattaya ( I guess to give way to a new lot).

Drew Noyes, the man behind the Pattaya Times, has been referred to as ‘Fringe Benefit’ because he seems to get himself invited to every party in town. His name is all over the local press, not because he is the guy on the fringe of the crowd who never seems to get his round in, as somebody has suggested. He is a man with a mission. To make money I think and be adored? Well, that was my first impression after doing a ‘Google’, but I have now spoken to Drew, who insists he is really all about making Pattaya a better place.

” You won’t see endless dead bodies, or any for that matter, in the newspaper I manage and edit,” he says, which is a great relief.

The broadsheet ‘Pattaya Times’ is apparently the biggest English language newspaper in Thailand outside Bangkok and is distributed in 485 locations on the eastern seaboard. I guess I must be a little out of touch as I have not seen a copy, but Drew has promised to put me right. Drew also says that with nine kids he does not have a lot of time for socialising but does go to the big events ‘especially if asked by someone of great power’. He has suggested we meet up at a forthcoming Breast Cancer fund-raiser but as its called ‘Pink Polo’ I may have to desist. I guess also the boss of Kingpower will be there.

Anyway newspaper bosses are having a go at each other. In England this only seems to happen when Editors steal each other’s girlfriends ( e.g. Donald Trelford of the Observer v Andrew Neil Sunday Times, in, ironically, the era of the ‘Asian Babes’) So welcome indeed to the world of Pattaya journalism where in the pursuit of truth one can freely show video and post reports of of foreign tourists and residents in all sort of post death situations without any thought whatsoever of their families or concept of human dignity, except thank goodness apparently - the Pattaya Times.

The journalist

I have always known Niels as ’Istedgade Neils’ by the way. Istedgade is one street in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro Red light area, at the back of central station, once very seedy and full of porno shops but, if we are to believe his critics, like former Neils, changed over the years to something new and improved.

Don’t go to war boys. It will be messy. Anything could happen. There are too many secrets out there. The next thing you know Rotary will be going to war with the Masons with machetes, the Pattaya ExPat Club, fighting the Pattaya City ExPat Club with zimmer frames , Tourist Police Assistants in a War against Volunteer Police…with pepper spray, Boyztown-Sunnee Plaza with flailing leotards… its endless.

Eveybody has his secrets. Best keep them…………. Or contact me/us here.

Footnote: Martin Frutin was a ‘respected member’ of the Masons and Pattaya Rotary Club.

Niels Colov is a former President of Rotary Club - Jomtien & Pattaya, current President of the Pattaya Expats Club…….and has a law firm.

Drew Noyes is a financial consultant , formed the opposition Pattaya City Expats Club…….and has a law firm.

The PDN has now removed Somchai’s links. This is what the PDN appears to consider ‘investigative journalism’. (This link shows a condescending Thai reporter/editor following what she considers a rather stupid foreign reporter about town. Very racist and patronising, but the author does not realise it. The Thai reporter/editor misses the story, but she does not realise that either)

Coming soon: ”Dear Chief Reporter, was it necessary to use that electric stun gun while interviewing that British tourist?”

Thailand hides weapon of mass destruction

Published

on January 27, 2010

. 7 Comments

Blog only

Today a pink and red faced son William Matthew Drummond, younger brother to Annie 2 years 4 months, made his debut shortly after 7 am, to the delight of his mother Pat and father journalist Andrew Drummond, at a hospital in Thailand, near a 7/11, a canal, a motorcycle queue, and a lot of overhead wiring.

WMD? On second thoughts make that Matthew William Drummond. Mother is doing fine. Father and Annie are pooped.

Flamboyant Scot on Yard child sex abuse watch list dies in Thailand

Published

on January 27, 2010

The Commission A good summary of the affair

. 2 Comments

‘His adopted son was by his side’

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok - January 26 2010
A flamboyant Scots businessman Martin Frutin, who left Scotland after being convicted of possessing child pornography in his Edinburgh mansion died in the Thai resort of Pattaya early today.

Martin Frutin with Scots musician Frankie Miller - May 2005

Martin Frutin, one time dancer, rock group manager, and travel agent, who was convicted of possessing indecent images of young boys, was reported to have died with his Thai ‘adopted son’ by his side.
He had been in the Bangkok Pattaya hospital for the last three months, with complications from pancreatitis.
Frutin, 69, formerly of Ravelston Dykes, Edinburgh, left Scotland permanently for Thailand more than fifteen years ago, eventually selling Frutin Travel, one of Scotland’s largest independent travel agencies.
Originally born in Giffnock, the son of Glasgow cinema manager, in 1962 Frutin won the ‘European Cha-cha, Jive and Twist Championships’ with his dance partner June Miller, from Pollock.
Dancing with the June Miller again in front of the Queen Mother at Glasgow’s, Alhambra Theatre, with a high kick he accidentally hit his partner on the head and himself ended up in the orchestra pit.
Thus he went into the music business and managed Scottish groups including the ‘Hitchhikers’, and Frankie Miller and the Delljacks. His assistant at the time was, the now better known, John Reid, from Govan, who went on to become the manager of Elton John before a serious financial bust-up with the superstar.
Frutin’s move to Thailand, which he had been visiting since the Sixties, and where he had already bought property, may have been hastened by the raid on his house in Ravelston Dykes. He was later convicted and fined 500 pounds at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in June 1996 after admitting the offence.
However Frutin remained on a British police paedophile watch list (before the days of the Paedophile Register) and shortly after he relocated, the National Criminal Intelligence Service – NCIS - were notified by Interpol in Bangkok that Frutin’s address , The Penthouse, Jomtien Hills Resort, in Pattaya had been searched in May 1996, a month before his Edinburgh conviction, and that again a number of indecent images of young children had been found.

martin-frutin-ncis11

Pattaya police took no action on the case, and six months later in December 1996, NCIS met with and then made written representations to the Thai Embassy in London giving details of Frutin and six other known or suspected British paedophiles living and working in Thailand. Fruiton was No.4 on their list.

martin-frutin-ncis22
Frutin was suspected of having contributed to local police funds. From that moment on he began a new life and rose to become a prominent member of Pattaya society, hobnobbing with the owners of the local English language newspapers, also assisting as a police interpreter, during the arrest of other foreigners.
He became known as Somsak-Martin, and found that his background was also of little hindrance to him becoming a television host, performing with comedy teeth and wigs, and, despite objections from people who knew his background, also a prominent member of the local Masonic Lodge, Pattaya West Winds and the Pattaya-Jomtien Rotary Club.
For the last year, before he took ill, he had teamed up with a Danish businessmen called Neils ‘Istegade’ Colov, also a police volunteer. He joined Colov’s local television channel ‘Pattaya People TV’ where he presented his own show giving ‘tourists tips’.
He drove a red Rolls Royce and went on to build himself a gated mansion called ‘Marfru Palace’ which had four home cinemas and a swimming pool into which he could slide from his second floor bedroom.
A close friend in Pattaya said today: “Martin died close to midnight last night after a long illness. His Scottish nephew and adopted Thai family were at his side. No arrangements have been made yet but it is understood that he will be cremated at the Jewish cemetery in Bangkok.”
By ‘adopted family’, said the spokesman for Martin Frutin, ‘I mean his adopted Thai son and staff.”
Mr. Colov’s ‘Pattaya People’ newspaper reported today: “ Always larger than life, Somsak Martin could put a smile on everyone’s face with his unique style of wit that genuinely touched the hearts of many. A piece of Pattaya history has left us and all who knew Somsak Martin will greatly miss him.”- And history he now becomes to CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Unit of the Serious Organised Crime Squad, who have taken over the Thailand watch.

First two strikingly opposing views on the same man. The monster story in the SUN and the eulogy of an obituary in the Scotsman by the legendary Beryl Beattie.

The Scotsman (Obit- The Saint) The SUN (The perv)

Other links: Scotsman News Evening Times Daily Record The Herald, Glasgow

How the Sun said it

Here also are links explaining the ‘Magic Circle’ Royal Commission in Scotland which the SUN mentions and which featured two Scottish Pattaya names Gordon May and Martin Frutin. It’s a bit of a red herring to this story however.

Could the Thai military have done a better deal at ‘Toys R Us’?

Published

on January 24, 2010

. 13 Comments

This is a news blog only
From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok
toys_r_us_logo_svg Action by the British Government to ban the bogus ADE651 explosives detectors which have been sold to Iraq will put the spotlight on the Thai government over the GT- 200, also sold by a British company. The GT-200 has been credited with little more than attributing to the deaths of people in the Islamic separatist insurgency in South Thailand.
The scandal of the bogus British bomb detectors, which have apparently also led to countless deaths in Iraq, is likely to gather momentum. Police in Somerset have arrested and bailed the owner of ATSC, a former Merseyside policeman, with little knowledge of science, and a lot of knowledge on how to make a fast buck.(but perhaps not as much knowledge as the buyers) At the moment police are only investigating suspected fraud. That appears to be an open and shut case as the British government has declared officially that the ADE651s is unable to detect explosives.

Could the boss, 53-yr-old Jim McCormick, not be done on more serious charges? And when will these machines be removed from the streets of Bagdad? And indeed when will the GT-200s be removed from the southern provinces of Thailand?
In the case of the GT 200, the centre of the controversy in Thailand, are claims that the British government actually approved the GT- 200 before it was sold to Thailand, where it is now being blamed for deaths of innocent civilians and police.
Meanwhile the Asian Human Rights Association and the Working Group for Justice and Peace are claiming the Thai military and Interior Ministry who bought the weapons are resisting the banning of these machines, while innocent people continue to die, flying in the face of the old adage ‘If in doubt – leave out!’

Maybe,just maybe, all you have to do is take these cards apart and find the non-existent microchip. Will the card that detects humans work in my local bar?

Yesterday a Thai Prime Minister’s office spokesman told me that an enquiry was under way, but people had come back with conflicting reports about the GT-200. And there we have it. The wheels are grinding with a lot of creaks and squeals.
Angkana Neelapaijit, Chairman of the WGJP said yet again: “We have all sorts of these machines. The British GT 200 is the most notorious (Thai forces are also using the Sniffex Plus and the Interior Ministry has bought the Alpha 6 and given it to regional police in a fanfare of press conferences).They are falsely reporting explosives at the top of coconut trees. And they have failed to detect explosives in cars and motorbikes which have subsequently exploded and killed people.
“The Generals like the machines, but the soldiers who have to operate them hate them. They would be as well off using an Ouija board.”
She added: “ We believe Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is aware of the situation and hope he will now act quickly. The news from Britain is encouraging. The ADE651 is a different machine, but similar.”
Then the subject turned to ‘The Committee of the South’ , a ‘symposium’, and letters still to be written to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The GT-200 does not need a symposium. Apparently one person with a sharp knife or pair of scissors can solve its riddle.
The GT200 is made and marketed by Global Technical Co. Ltd, of Ashford, Kent or more precisely of Unit 7, The Glenmore Centre Moat Way, Sevington, Ashford, Kent TN24 0TL. Tel:+44 0 8701 694017.

On its website it claims it is ‘registered and supported’ by the British government and adds: ”Contrary to recent misinformation, our equipment trial reports and references provided by the Government are all original documents”. They also claim: “When the need arises, we are also able to call on the services of the Ministry of Defence to assist with various training courses”.
“This all despite the fact that last year last year Quenton Davies, Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, told the company to remove a suggested MoD endorsement for the GT-200 from its website and literature.
A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The GT 200 has not been considered to satisfy any of the capabilities we need”.
I spoke to Adam Thomas of UK Trade and Investment’s Defence and Security Organisation and he admitted that an EST (Export Support Team) had ‘looked at’ the GT200 in Chatham in 1999 but had not subjected it to a ‘formal test’. I detected a few moments of awkwardness in our conversation.
gt2002-thailand1 The report the EST team made had since been mislaid, he admitted, in a ministry shake up. But the company seems to have that report from the MoD anyway endorsing their product.
“The company cannot market this machine today, which we saw in 1999, saying the MoD has confirmed its capabilities”. Reading between the lines I sense that something happened in 1999 which the MoD may be regretting.
“If the Thai government asks us to test the GT200 now we will do so”, insisted Mr. Thomas.
The GT200 works on the same supposed principal as the ADE651 and also has no powered parts and allegedly works on the energy of its operator. Similar too is the Alpha 6, 799 units of which have been sold to the Thai Ministry of the Interior for UK11,000 pounds each.
The machines allegedly work on ‘molecular magnetic resonance’ and the wand points to the suspected substance, just like a water diviner. Yes the parts in these machines can’t cost much more than a fiver, once the moulds have been made.
The machines come with ‘substance detection cards’ which are ‘designed to tune into the frequency of the targeted explosives or substance’. (worth about 5p or 3 baht in the case of the ADE651)
But when Dr, Markus Khun of Cambridge University, examined one of the cards used in the British company ATSC’s ADE651, which was sold to Iraq at US$40,000 a piece, he told Newsnight: “There is nothing to programme in these cards. There is no memory. They are the cheapest form of electronics you can get to look like electronics. They are worth 2p or 3p.”…. quod erat demonstrandum.
If the GT-200 cards are the same, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, perhaps the Thai military could have spent US$15 at ‘Toys R Us’ and still have got a better deal.
Thai military are also using another ‘magic wand’ known as the ‘Sniffex’ , marketed from Germany, which was tested by the US Navy in 2005 and found that it could not detect 1000 lbs of explosives at 20 ft.

Has Thailand fallen for ‘all’ the scammers? Or is it in connivance?

Gary Bolton, CEO, of Global Technical Co. Ltd., of Ashford, refused to give any financial figures in fact he declined to comment in December other than saying in an email: “I am updating the website. ” The website has not been updated as of today, and Gary does not want to talk on the phone it seems. On his site he has a ‘get out’ clause stating the GT-200s are best used in conjunction with sniffer dogs. But I bet he did not tell the Thai authorities that they should buy a couple of thousand sniffer dogs as well.

American professional magician James Randi has claimed that GT200, ADE 165, Alpha 6, are all frauds and has offered $1m if he could be proved wrong.

But actually what is most alarming about the whole ‘magic wand’ saga is the ‘Who Cares?’ factor.

This story has been out there for quite some time. Just google ‘GT-200′, ‘Alpha 6′, ’Sniffex’ and five other brands and you will find it all.
In fact it’s really one of the biggest ‘military scandals’ around, because not many corrupt deals can be held directly responsible for the cause of deaths…as they can here.
The first story I believe was on ‘National Public Radio’ in the US in September last year. Then it was forgotten about until November when the New York Times half heartedly took up the case but did not pursue it. The NYT was followed later by the ‘Times’ in London, Yesterday an old colleague on the Daily Mail, Kim Sengupta now long since writing for the Independent in the UK gave the story close to its due worth, even though it was mainly a clip and paste (copied today in the Spectrum section of the Bangkok Post).
But it actually took the BBC’s Newsnight to actually go out and test the machines in question, something the newspapers should have done a long time ago.

The ‘Times’ so called ’investigation’ was less scientific but it had me chuckling. It was done I presume by the author, another former and amiable younger colleague from my Observer days, Simon de Bruxelles. The Times man put the machine on a desk, sent someone out to buy a load of fireworks (nah, probably had to go himself) and placed them in front of the machine and when the wand did not move, concluded the experiment! That’s what happens when you are reporting from the office and working to today’s newspaper budgets. Television runs away with the story. Well not quite. The newspaper thundered ‘Bomb detectors banned after Times expose!’ So thank you, NPR, Newsnight, ’The Times’ or rather New York Times, comic magician James Randi, and especially the author of www.sniffexquestions.blogspot.com , of whom the latter two have beaten all us journalists hands down!

Thailand’s problem at the moment is not so much its usual inability to get things done quickly, but more the reasons why? There are people who want nothing done.
Sure let the Thai scientists probe the GT 200, but give it to the British government to test too, or maybe even BBC Newsnight, who took it to a Cambridge University professor. Actually if some-one sends any of us a GT 200 ’substance detection card’ thanks to Dr. Markus, we could detect within a few minutes if it’s not going to work!

And if the GT-200s are proved to be equally duff, heads should of course roll. But that’s not the most important thing. The GT 200s should be taken off the streets now. Should they not?
But then again I guess the buzz has gotten around and no soldier will be staking his life on these machines in the future, rather they will adopt the Thai attitude and just salute and wave happily, do a thumbs up when the generals pass, and then put the GT-200s back in the lockers.

The Spongebob Squarepants model - only US$14.95 with working parts

Meanwhile of course once they have dealt with the GT-200, the military will have to deal with the Sniffex Pluses, and the Ministry of Interior and Police will have to deal with the Alpha 6’s. The only thing that can save the day for them is a typical Thai court ‘flat earth’ judgment…not possible if this gets too much publicity outside Thailand.

The Provincial Governors of Thailand have been holding press conferences boasting of the Alpha’s prowess in drugs detection. Minister of Interior Chavarat Charnvirakul is promoting the machines in his ‘Clean and Seal for the Nation’ campaign to eradicate drugs ( I thought they could have fitted in a rhyming ’heal’ into their slogan as well). Anyway the Interior Ministry got their Alphas at a snip - Bt550,000 each while the Ministry of Defence bought the GT-200 for Bt 770,000 each.

If one of these machines points at me and policeman says ‘Se-top!, my hands are going to go up like a flash, because no doubt I will have been identifed as a ‘crack’ or ‘ice’ hood, and Thai police have yet to be disarmed and they can shoot quicker than they can, well, read an Alpha 6…well at least thats what the relatives of victims of a previous PM’s drug war will say.

Finally a message for those operating ‘magic wands’: ‘It’ll be your fault!’. In every known case where these machines have been blamed for deaths and injuries, the manufacturers and military put it down to to ‘operator failure’.

PS: For those who did not see the BBC Newsnight test on the ADE651 card here is the link

Edited: Additional info Grant Peck/AP

British ‘magic wands’ accused of killing people in South Thailand

Published

on January 4, 2010

. 24 Comments

‘These British machines are falsely finding explosives in coconut trees. But people die when they give false negative reports ’.

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok, Monday January 4th 2010
Pictures: Andrew Chant/WGPP

The Prime Minister of Thailand will this week be asked to order the withdrawal of British explosives detection equipment known as ‘magic wands’ for testing amid claims they are killing members of the country’s security forces.

The move follows a similar controversy in Iraq two months ago where some 1,500 ‘magic wands’ sold under the name ADE165 by the British company ATSC were ridiculed for their lack of capability by the US military.

coconut-tree Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva will be asked to act on claims that similar machines sold under the name GT-200 have given totally false readings which have led to several deaths in Islamic southern Thailand, the scene of separatist terrorism.

“They are falsely identifiying explosives at the top of coconut trees, but not finding when the bombs are real and people are dying,” said Angkana Neelapaijit, a member of the parliamentary ad hoc ‘Committee on the south’ which will make the demand formal for the machines to be withdrawn and tested.
She added: “Our scientific advisors have compared the GT-200 to bomb detecting with a Ouija board.”
Already the Working Group for Justice and Peace and the Asian Human Rights Commission have called for the detectors to be withdrawn until they have been scientifically tested in Thailand.

Thai military with GT-200

The latest controversy involves the Ashford, Kent, based company ‘Global Technical Co.Ltd.,’ which last year was asked by Quenton Davies, Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, to remove a suggested MoD endorsement for the GT-200 from its website.

The Thai Interior Ministry is also promoting the ‘Alpha 6′ detector and supplying some 800 to police nationwide at 555,000 baht each -11,000 pounds sterling to detect drugs.
But ‘magic wands’ known as GT-200 used by the Thai army and sold without cabinet approval under ‘a secret military deal’, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, are the ones of main concern, because they are supposed to detect explosives.
The units allegedly work on the principal of ‘magnetic molecular resonance’ or ‘nano ionic resonance’ and or ‘dia/para magnetism’.
The US Justice Ministry, which issued a warning about similar machines, calls it ‘Molecular Frequency Distribution’ and states in a report: “None of these attempts to create devices that can detect specific materials such as explosives (or any materials for that matter) have been proven successful in controlled double-blind scientific tests”.
A ‘magic wand’ tested by the US Navy called the Sniffex, could not detect 1000 lbs of explosives at 20 feet.
In theory the gadgets works like water diviners. They all come with a wand which is supposed to point out whatever the operator is seeking. If it’s TNT or C4 explosives the operator is looking for, the GT200, will supposedly point him to it. The units have no battery power but work off the power of the operator.
Slip other cards special cards into to the machines and they will detect cocaine, heroin, ice, and the drug of your choice – at 5oo metres, claim the distributors.
Angkana Neelapaijit, also Chairman of Thailand’s Working Group for Justice and Peace said: “They have been compared to using ouija boards. In all cases when the machines fail the operators are blamed. The generals say the machines are good. The people who have to use the machines, the soldiers, say the opposite. They don’t work and can be deadly!
“ I have tried speaking to the Prime Minister and British Ambassador to Thailand. The Prime Minister at the moment supports his Generals’ view. The Ambassador Quinton Quayle did not want to talk.”

Aftermath of undetected bomb in Pattani

The WGJP blames the GT-200 for several deaths. In their report they claim that on October 6th last year near the Merlin Hotel, in Sungai-Golok and October 19th at Pimonchai Market in Yala, bombs went off causing death and several injuries in a car and motorcycle, just a few minutes after the vehicles had been checked with the GT-200 ‘magic wands’.
They also claim that on November 7th three Border Patrol officers were killed when a bomb exploded as they were investigating a suspicious object in Pattani. Again the GT-200 showed negative results.
And again in Pattani, South Thailand, when a bomb was hidden among the dead bodies of a murdered couple in Kok Pho district, officials used the GT200 to check the bodies . The equipment suggested nothing. When officials lifted the bodies up, the bomb went off, claim the WGJP
The WGJP pointed out: “The reading device is ambiguous and subjective. There is no clear indicator. It is vague enough to excuse the authorities’ ineffectiveness. If a false negative turns out they can just blame the operator”.
The MoD says the machines are not used by British forces and do not confirm to British forces requirements.
A spokesman said Global Technical had brought a machine to them for evaluation in 1999. But the machine was not subject to proper MOD testing. “The company cannot market the machine today stating the MoD has confirmed its capabilities.”
Gary Bolton of Global Technical Ltd said the company would be updating its website later this month. Technical information provided by Global and Technical says its performance has been backed by the British Army. However the machine cannot pinpoint explosive, rather narrow them down to an area of four cubic metres.

The full range of the GT-200's bomb detecting capabilities as shown in Thailand. Not everybody believes the claims.

The Thai spy in Cambodia - the real scandal

Published

on December 15, 2009

. 13 Comments

This is a blog only

I have been following the Thai ‘non spy’ in Cambodia affair with interest. In fact I am as usual having a problem reading the newspapers with a straight face. Seems nobody in Thailand has done any real reporting on this case at all, or perhaps I have missed it. Certainly there is so much missing from the English language press. So below is scenario which involves flooding the Bangkok Post news room with hacks from London’s Fleet Street. The coverage might be a bit more sensational, but perhaps a bit more truthful too.

bangkokpostthaispy

The story so far: Hun Sen the Prime Minister of Cambodia has announced his undying love for Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted ex-Prime Minister of Thailand, and one time owner of Manchester City FC. Hun Sen, who objects to being called a gangster, has already announced that he hates the Thai current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and his foreign Minister and has appointed Thaksin as his country’s economics advisor. Thaksin flies in and out by private jet from Dubai, an Emirates state in dire need of a financial adviser. Then there is outrage as Hun Sen discovers that a Thai national has told a diplomat at the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh of Thaksin’s arrival. Sivarak Chutipong, an employee of the Cambodian Air Traffic whatsit, is arrested for being a spy. However, without even waiting for a bit of that old Cambodian torture, Thailand’s James Bond confesses to telling the diplomat Thaksin’s plane has arrived. He is in a tizzy and instead of taking it on the chin, takes it on the Shin, and calls for the help of his mummy and Thaksin Shinawatra, who is a real man of the people, but travelling the world posing as an international criminal. The drama is tense ‘Could Thaksin Shinawatra’s plane have been blown out of the skies?’ Yes, says a Cambodian judge and sentences Sivarak to seven years. All is resolved when the forgiving family men Thaksin and Hun Sen send our puffy faced man with the wet handkerchief back home.

Scene: Editorial newsroom of the Bangkok Post now staffed by ex-journalists from the Daily Mail, Sun, and Mirror. Morning conference:

Editor: Right lads what are we going to do about our national Sivarak Chutipong, who’s been arrested for being spying in Cambodia? I think we’ve got to be a little outraged here. There’s clearly something odd going on. Cambodia’s only national secret is the behavior of its Prime Minister.
News Editor: Well the Cambodian Air Traffic Services (CATS) controls not only Phnom Penh and Siem Reap airports but all domestic airports in the country. Our guys are running the air space out there but their website is down. Anyway nothing takes off without them knowing. As for Thaksin he always arrives with a fanfare and does everything but kiss the tarmac. Sivarak told our diplomat what he already knew. Thaksin had already arrived. He could have just popped his head round the corner to have seen that, or told our attaché to turn on his TV. I guess the bandleader knew hours ahead…..There may be a business angle to this too.

City Editor: Yes Samart who own CATS has always been in competition to Thaksin in the communications field. Samart got into Cambodia before Thaksin did. Thaksin does not like losing. I’ll get my guys to look at Thaksin’s investments in Cambodia. Actually Samart probably went in with the wrong guy. They got the first Thai mobile phone contract there. But they got in through their connections to Sun Chanthol, who was then with Prince Rannaridh’s FUNCINPEC party. He is now only in the current government through political expediency and fear, a lot of his opposition mates are now dead or have fled. He’s tipped to go soon too.

Foreign Editor: We’ll we can put a piece together giving a background on Hun. I suggest we start off with the confession by the ex-Phnom Penh police chief Heng Peov. He accuses Hun of being involved in drugs trafficking, the systematic removal by execution of his rivals, ordering the setting off grenades at opposition demonstrations, and there’s always the dead mistress Piseth Pileka.

Editor: Hun? Actually I don’t think Hun is his first name. Better check it out. Think you have to use Hun Sen in full here. Anyway I like the starlet angle.

Gossip page editor: Yes, we can cover that. She is the Cambodian classical dancer who was the former mistress to former Cambodian Police Chief Hoc Lundy, who passed her onto Khun Hun. Sorry Hun Sen. Seems Hun Sen’s wife did not like it though. Seems she asked Lundy to get rid of her. She was shot in broad daylight in Phnom Penh. There’s something a bit Princess Di about her. Everybody loved her even though she was taking pirate gold.

Gossip Editor: Won’t Hun Sen sue us?
Editor: Not in our courts!

Foreign Editor: Yes and Hoc Lundy was not only Cambodia’s police chief, he was also the mafia chief. He was banned from the United States for suspicion of being involved in drugs trafficking, which means they had him bang to rights. He’s dead now though. No libel issues here.
Editor: Okay. And I want to know every cough, spit and fart about this guy Sivarak. We’ve got to find a hero here. See all his friends and relatives. What are his politics? Get the love angle. At the moment he’s looking a bit like a wimp crying for his mummy. Also we need to remind our readers that Thaksin Shinawatra has been convicted of criminal acts of corruption.

News Editor: Are you sure that’s wise. We could lose a few readers.

Editor: Okay, the owners may not like it, just a couple of paragraphs. Don’t go back too far. Thai people will have forgotten. Besides he might be back to jail us next year. Go with the personal stuff on Sivarak.

Editor: What about our man in Phnom Penh?

Foreign Editor:” He’s keeping a low profile. Scared he might be arrested for plane-spotting. Well actually he has been plane-spotting because we have not paid him for a few months. Its a bit unsafe now. But he was at the airport when Thaksin arrived. We probably knew before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Editor: Turns to secretary: “Now can I have that coffee”

“Off course Hun. I mean Khun Editor”

Next day’s headlines

Front Page: CAM-BODGE-D! THAI HELD ON TRUMPED UP CHARGE

Pages: 3,and 4, THE MONSTER RUNNING CAMBODIA!

Pages: 4,& 5: Picture exclusive. Sivarak Chutipong: from cradle to stinking Cambodian hell hole.

Sign the Petition: BRING BACK OUR BOY!

Pages 6 & 7: Ex-girlfriend speaks for the first time: ‘My gentle lover now sleeping with the rats’
Pages 8 & 9: Cambodian politicians paid in dollars for night in heaven with screen idol.

“I thought some of her class might have rubbed off on me, then the big boss wanted her all to himself” ex-police chief tells medium from beyond the grave

Page 10: Best friend: ‘HE WORE A RED SHIRT BUT HAD A YELLOW STREAK TOO!.

City Pages: Thaksin Sinawatra’s cash in Cambodia and new business plans. Plus: Thaksin the new king of the Cambodian skies.
Property: Cambodian poor beg: ’PLEASE MR. THAKSIN CAN YOU ASK HUN SEN TO GIVE US OUR HOMES BACK?

Headlines today December 16th 2009

Page One: “TRAITOR! MUMMY’S BOY HOLD THE HAND OF A MONSTER’

Pages 2 & 3: “I want my case raised as a censure motion,” sobs Sivarak
(at least that’s what mummy says I want)

Page 4: Girlfriend speaks: “My boyfriend was a love-rat. He was so bl**dy gentle I didn’t even know he was there! ”

Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement: ‘OH DO JUST GO HOME SIVARAK!”

Simon Cowell says: ‘Look you guys you need professional management. Even a Thai audience aren’t going to fall for this.’

Footnote: There is a precedent that beats this in terms of a non story which has provided entertainment for millions. In the 80s the British press were given a story about how superstitious Catholic Spaniards threw a donkey off a church tower on St. Wotsit’s Day every year.

Animal loving Brits were horrified. The press were in a frenzy to save the donkey and off went reporters from the Sun, Star, Mirror, and Express. The donkey was called ‘Nigger’ but for PC purposes that was changed to ‘Blackie’. Two or three newspapers rescued ‘Blackie’ or what they thought was ‘Blackie’ bringing their prizes back to the UK.

The stories of what the journalists did to beat each other on the story are legendary, better than many ’front line’ stories. So is what happened to the poor unfortunate donkeys. I believe now in a certain town in Spain if a black donkey hears there is a British journalist in town, he will climb to the top of the church tower himself and jump off voluntarily.

Disabled Brits face ‘girlfriend’ deprivation - Pattaya

Published

on December 14, 2009

. 16 Comments

This is a blog only

In the spirit of ‘well just fancy that’ comes the news that some of us poor Brits living over here in Thailand are panicking a bit because those who distribute social security payments back home are blocking payments to people essentially living overseas.

So step-forward the Pattaya Brits who find that even a half-good disability pension will cover an apartment, a few beers and a few girls a week in this charming resort though with the drop of the British pound some may have to reduce the quality of service.

Anyway now despite the chippies, greasy breakfasts, mushy peas, warm beer, urinating in the street, football, drunken punch ups, pub quiz nights, drag acts, and having a ‘gaff’, these ‘geezers’ are coming to the realisation that yes, they are in fact in the overseas category.

'Nah not me. Must be some other geezers' So now we have to wait and see how they wriggle out of it. Some I gather are already perfecting disguises like this chap here on the right.

A hundred or so Brits have been writing into the local website ‘PattayaSecrets.com’ seeking more information and offering comment after a rumours started that (1) Customs and Revenue and (2) The Department of Work and Pensions, were opening up offices in the resort.

What a diabolical liberty!

Some of the posters are making known exactly what they feel about people who ‘grass them up’.

PattayaSecrets.com is not shy about being a site for ‘mongers’; in the local parlance, people who habitually seek sex with prostitutes.

The site even has a section for trip reports where punters rate the sexual abilities of individual Thai ‘bar girls’ and post pictures of their ‘purchases’. I’d much rather like to see a site where the girls rate their punters.

One poster ‘Kwarmsuk’ writes: “Why the f**k should I pay for some scrounging f**ker who is living in Thailand when I work like f**k and pay taxes to keep them. I personally know at least 4 or 5 guys claiming sickness benefit from the UK living in Pattaya and they seem to visit bars, and monger with Thai girls ok”. (A little editing was essential here)

Its comforting to see however that many Brits too are angry about these scroungers, one of the most famous of whom in the UK was photographed running a marathon while claiming benefit as an invalid. Actually Brit Paul Appleby (pictured below) ran three marathons between 2002 and 2005 while claiming he could only walk with the aid of sticks or a frame and most of the time was wheelchair bound.

Even Soi 7, the site-owner, enters the fray in his case to extol the benefits of disability payments:” I tore a tendon in my wrist years ago. The doctor said no work for a month. I applied for and got disability payments and went straight to Las Vegas and spent the time enjoying myself. Could not see a thing wrong with that”

Well I guess he could still handle a game of Blackjack or Pontoon and pull a one armed bandit. But, I guess, there’s some things he could not do with his remaining workable wrist which could result in clinical depression.

marathon-man1 A poster cutely called ‘Gobbler’ wrote: “It is wrong to claim benefits while living abroad, especially those whoring in Thailand. There is a free grass telephone line if you know anyone doing this despicable practice”

But he was quickly put down by ‘johnniec63’ who wrote: “People like you make me f….g puke!”

(There’s a lot of f…g! on this site by the way)

One poster thinks he has found his way around social security sleuths: “Fly to Belfast, then go to Dublin by bus. No checkpoint or visa check on border. Then buy flight ticket from Dublin to Thailand that way, the UK government will think you are still in the UK!”

Crafty blighter. The British authorities will never work that one out, especially when his ATM card reveals a location next to the ‘Gobble and Go’ bar. Well actually he’s a bit short on knowledge about how much the authorities do know about ticketing.

Disability pension can be over 180 quid (to use the vernacular) a week sterling, a junior executive salary in Thailand, two to three times the salary of a bus driver and about the same as say a foreign sub-editor on the Bangkok Post English language newspaper, which is quite a lot if you don’t even know what country Copenhagen is the capital of.

Of course there are disabilities which I suppose could warrant a sojourn to Pattaya, though I am not entirely convinced that it is a cure for ‘clinical depression’ as some people seem to have been on the cure for years.

Actually I know one of these chaps from a bar in Bangkok. He flies to Thailand at least three times a year. The last time he arrived he told me just how cheap he was able to get his latest consignment of ‘Kamagra’.

Perhaps he gets in on prescription. I can’t look at him with a straight face.

But as one who pays taxes in both the UK and Thailand and sees the National Health Service struggling to cope, partially because we have to pay all these fraudulent claims, I would have no problems reporting genuine frauds.

Journalism and yak fur

Published

on December 8, 2009

. 7 Comments

This is a blog only

Today I hand over this blog to a missive from Roger Beaumont , my ‘hail fellow well met’ public school rebel friend, who used to work on the ‘Nation’ but left when the editors decided they could produce an English language newspaper with a designer from Milwaukee and without too many troublesome English language sub-editors and columnists.

Searching for perhaps eternal youth, or the meaning of life etc, lovable and always upbeat Roger, is now ensconsed in Thimpu, and the picture postcard land of Bhutan, the Land of (extremely exaggerated I suspect*) Gross National Happiness, aka, the Land of the Thunder Dragon. I think he went to the airport and decided just to get the third flight up on the display board, which is what I did in my youth. Anyway, after first thinking, Oh F..k!, he is now learning about inner happiness, under a pile of yak fur.

Roger

Yes, Roger loves it there, But what the brochures do not tell you is to what degree winters can freeze your goollies. So I guess he’s also up there on the net seeking mail order Agas (public school you know) second hand hot water bottles, etc. Red Cross parcels can be sent simply to Roger, Thimpu, the whole town knows him. Visitors to see him however will still have to pay the Government rate of US$200 a day. Roger keeps in touch with a number of us while warming his nether regions squatting I suspect over lighted candles liberated from a local temple.

Anyway he still appears to be watching politics in Thailand, so here’s a copy of a letter he has written to the Bangkok Post. It may have appeared in the letters page. I am just guessing it has not because I have not been reading the Post this week, but the Post is not heavily into self flaggellation.

So the hills are alive with the ‘Sound of Roger’ and this also shows how Thai politics can really get to you. Most foreigners just head up to the top story of a local condo. Roger is amongst the highest mountains in the world. Don’t do it Rodge, you’re out of it now, besides, I’m buying the turkey tomorrow!

Footnote:December 9th. The Bangkok finally printed Roger’s letter today followed by two readers anxious to tell the newspapers sub-editors that Copenhagen was NOT the capital of Norway as the newspaper had claimed. Seems like they need some new sub-editors there too. (here too sometimes but you get my literals for free!)

*The land of Gross National Happiness is also credited with having the worst national dish, ‘ema datsi’, a concoction of yak cheese, chillies, and onions. I believe the affects of this dish also gave the country its ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon’ tag.

Dear fellows,
I have no idea, as of writing, whether this will make BKK’s Postbag/letters to the editor page or not. I would have liked to have written it in green ink on immaculate writing paper, and by the way, how do you spell garrotted?
Best
Rodge

Dear Sir,
To the surprise of no one, Thai politicians, like most politicians, only obey the law when there is no alternative because they believe they are immune from the laws which they have made. They have ambitions but no ideals and will always compromise any promise for self-interest.
They know how material benevolence can gain public opinion, but forgot how moral failure can lose it. So, the question is: how do bright, conscientious Thais actually feel when they see the betrayal or inversion of the country’s best values and dreams? How do they keep their scruples and intellect intact when reality deems that any act that’s immoral, as long as it succeeds, is alright?
Surely, morality is where it all starts and in many ways ends. If a Thai – and anyone else for that matter - doesn’t have a moral foundation, or if they are not knowledgeable about it, or don’t know how to control it, and don’t feel historically tied to it by culture or family, then whatever they do is not as valuable or strong as it could be.
The point is, Thai politics is not a public service, it is a private business, and if those who have done no wrong can find no way to punish those who have, then they are all as culpable as one another. Just knowing that moral grown-ups don’t need rules to tell them what’s right is like wishing for an outbreak of common sense in Parliament.

New Bhutan wildlife

What we have today is manga politics, brimming with vain, loathsome, cartoonish,
manipulative, insensitive bullies throwing dung at each other of their own making. They ooze entitlement but none of them are likeable or forgivable and yet they insist on being wai-ed every five minutes, demanding more respect than those fallen in battle.
And now they want guns. Good. Perhaps they’ll eliminate each other in one glorious shoot out over a mia noi in a Yasothon car park. I wouldn’t trust any of them with the TV remote. They are bereft of decency and beyond parody. Are these so called leaders, the people young Thais should look up to as an example?
Their well-rehearsed response of being corrupt was like my university friend’s well-rehearsed response of being drunk; shift the blame by claiming victim status. Rather than apologise, my friend would insist: “I was led on by the treachery of others, sir.”
If the future of Thailand depended on the intellectual quality of its politicians, it would end at about happy hour tomorrow night.
What brilliant men they are not.

Roger Beaumont,
Thimphu, Bhutan

Brits in Thai island ‘drug rape’ pin their hopes on Scotland Yard

Published

on December 4, 2009

Link Evening Standard The SUN

. 9 Comments

From Andrew Drummond, Koh Chang, Thailand

White Sands Beach, Koh Chang

Scotland Yard confirmed today that they have conducted tests on a British couple who say they were subjected to a horrifying gang rape in Thailand and planned to co-operate with a Thai police investigation into the incident.

The couple who fled back to London feeling that Thai police were botching their own investigation have given video statements and undergone extensive forensic analysis , at the hands of a Metropolitan police ‘Sapphire Project’ team.
the-haven They are now receiving counseling at ‘The Haven’, the Met Police, Barts and NHS Sexual Offences Referral unit at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel – after a seemingly horrific ‘Clockwork Orange’ style attack on them on the Thai holiday Island of Koh Chang last month.
Known by the names ‘Richard’ and ‘Susan’ they claimed the rapes happened when they must have invited other fellow tourists, a girl and two men, they had met at a beach bar to their holiday bungalow to continue to drink and listen to music in their room. The couple cannot actually recall inviting anyone back and say it would have been out of character.

Susan, 31, said she recalled that the English girl requested she put on the song ‘It’s getting hot in here, so please take off your clothes’, by Nelly. But she could not work her laptop anymore and must have passed out in the process of looking for it.
Both lost consciousness and Richard, 42, a company director, said he recalled briefly waking as he was being forcibly held against a bungalow window and made to watch his girlfriend, being raped by two men.
The couple claimed they slept for two days afterwards, occasionally waking up to splitting headaches. When the headaches wore off both felt considerable discomfort both in their sexual organs and anal passages. “I had no strength or ability to resist or fight”.
When they went to the local hospital on Koh Chang, a doctor called police on their behalf. He said that the couple had symptoms of having been administered the drug Dormicon.
Dormicon is a generic of midzolam which has been used in the United States to give to prisoners on death row to relax them shortly before execution. It’s also used as a pre-op drug in hospitals. It can affect people in different ways.
At Koh Chang’s International Clinic Dr. Roongtham Charentantanakul who counseled them said: “We have had other cases like this, but this is the first case that I have heard of where foreigners have given such a drug to other foreigners.
“These cases are very difficult to deal with. These drugs have two main affects, one is hypnotic and the other is retrograde amnesia. That means the victims can fully co-operate with their attackers and then afterwards forget all about it or only have partial recall. In one case, he said, a woman was actually injected on a dance floor. She felt it something in her upper arm when it happened and looked around, but as she was a little bit drunk, she just carried on dancing.
“There are unscrupulous drug store owners in Thailand who will sell these sorts of drugs over the counter.
“But unless the couple are treated and tested immediately traces of the drugs disappear from the body within 12 hours. In that case all the evidence police will get is that they actually co-operated.”
Susan however said today: “We have been told by Scotland Yard forensics officers that it is possible that they can find a trace of the drug, and of sexual assault. We have both been given full tests and those have shown I have been assaulted, although because of the time frame some things have healed. We will have to wait for further tests of hair roots as they try and identify the drug’s make-up.”
Richard and Susan had just spent 11 months on a round the world and decided to spend the last week of a ‘truly wonderful experience’ chilling out on the beach at Koh Chang, an island just off Cambodia.

The popular Sabay Bar on Koh Chang

On November 18th they said they went to the popular ‘Sabay” beach and music bar on Haad Sai Kao (White Sands Beach) Koh Chang to watch a fire show and dance and listen to the band.
There they met three Frenchman and an English girl and spent much of the evening in their company.
When the bar closed the couple, the English girl, and two of the Frenchmen, went back to their bungalow at White Sands Garden situated up a hill in a rubber plantation. They were later joined by the third Frenchman. Shortly afterwards both Richard and Susan say they lost consciousness.

The couple's bungalow room at White Sands Garden

Said Richard: “The police acted as if they did not believe our story. They did not take any DNA evidence from the room, but it was clear the bed cover was heavily stained and there were marks on the window where my face had been pressed against it.
“I woke up in a foetal position outside our bungalow room. These men were laughing as they left. They boasted about what they had done. I believe the English girl was used to give us a feeling of re-assurance, and in fact we were targeted from the point we met this group.
“We left Thailand because we were unhappy with the investigation and we took the bedclothes with us. But it has always been my intention to go back and I have told the Embassy to tell the police I will. What these people did was barbaric.”
From their own enquiries the couple has established details of two of the four people and have information about the third man. One of them has since removed his ‘Facebook’ page, a second is the son of a wealthy businessman and is known for his martial arts. They believe they have found an internet photograph of the third man.
At the island’s police station Inspector Sibayot Chittiyakul said: “ We are taking this seriously, but we need witnesses. The safety of tourists is important to us. But the couple have to understand we have procedures to follow and the first thing is to get their full statements.
“We have names and identities and are monitoring the case, one of whom has a Thai address. But we cannot make an arrest until the man completes his statement.”
The Thai owner of the White Sands Garden who asked not to be named said however the group all arrived back in the early hours on November 19th and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
“The English man later apologized in the morning for all the noise. Foreigners like to party. That is all it seemed to us.”
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “We can confirm that an SCD2 Team (Special Crime Directorate 2 - Sapphire Project) from Kingston have been assisting the Thai authorities in reference to allegations of rape.” The spokesman added as it was a Thai investigation the matter would have to go through the appropriate channels.

Rape scene from 'A Clockwork Orange'

The 70s cult film ‘A Clockwork Orange’ directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Malcolm McDowell is best remembered for a scene in which a gang of delinquents known as the ‘Droogs’ who get high on senseless violence and rape a woman in front of her author husband. The anti-hero, Alex, is later treated with drugs by the state so that he suffers extreme nausea at the very thought of violence and sexual activity and is released into society where he becomes a victim.

The relevant FCO Travel Advisory

“There have been a number of incidents where tourists have had their drinks drugged (in both tourist areas and red light districts). You should be careful about taking drinks from strangers and be wary at clubs and parties, particularly in the Koh Samui area and at the Full Moon party on Phangan Island where incidences of date rape have been reported. A number of British nationals have suffered severe psychiatric problems because of drug use, in a small number of cases resulting in suicide.

We receive occasional reports of tourists who have been robbed after bringing visitors to their hotel rooms. In some cases their drinks were drugged. Ensure that your passport and wallet are secure at all times.

We continue to receive reports of sexual offences committed against foreign women and men. In 2007 our Consular staff were aware of a number of British nationals who were the victim of a serious sexual offence in Thailand. In January 2006, three British women were raped in separate incidents in Thailand, including one who was murdered.

Female travellers in particular should maintain a high state of personal awareness during their time in Thailand. Be aware that alcohol and drugs can lead to you being less alert, less in control and less aware of your environment. If you are going to drink, know your limit. Remember that drinks served in bars overseas are often stronger than those in the UK. Reports of sexual assaults against women have become particularly prevalent in the Koh Samui archipelago. Women travellers are, therefore, advised to take particular care over their personal security whilst staying in this area. For more guidance about this see our Rape and sexual assault overseas page.

You should report any incidents of crime to the Thai police before leaving the country.

Fisherman jailed for murder of British yachtsman - Thailand

Published

on November 29, 2009