By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DE FACTO PHEU THAI BOSS Thaksin Shinawatra has been encouraged to exert his personal influence to the extent that suspected call-centre scams based in Cambodia’s Poipet township and Sihanoukville city and preying on victims in Thailand be completely suppressed.
Given his long-lasting, personal ties with former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, the former Thai counterpart/now de facto Pheu Thai boss was more or less anticipated to take action, albeit in discreet, behind-the-scenes fashion, to press Cambodian authorities to crack down on transnational criminals doing illegal businesses in Poipet across the Thai-Cambodian border from Aranyaprathet district in eastern Thailand and those in Cambodia’s coastal city of Sihanoukville, according to Thailand’s former National Security Council secretary-general Paradorn Pattanathabut.
Thaksin, father of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, had earlier pinpointed a couple of buildings in Poipet where suspected call-centre scams have allegedly preyed across the border on the Thais and insisted that Hun Sen’s son/Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet promptly launch a crackdown on them all or else he threatened to see to it himself, either with or without prior consent from Phnom Penh.
”Given the probability that scammers could thrive in Cambodia after those in Myanmar may have been more or less cracked down, Thaksin should be obliged to play a decisive role in collaboration with the Cambodian government to put an end to such transnational crimes once and for all,” the former NSC chief said.
Paradorn suggested the de facto Pheu Thai boss take action against the suspected scammers in Cambodia in the wake of the Pheu Thai-led government’s order for the Provincial Electricity Authority to completely shut off daily power supply to Tachileik township in Shan State of Myanmar opposite Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai, Myawaddy township in Kayin State across the shared border from Mae Sot district of Tak and Payathonzu township in Karen State opposite Sangkhlaburi district of Kanchanaburi.
Besides, Internet signals emitted across the Thai-Myanmar border by firms under control of the National Broadcasting & Telecommunication Commission have been ordered shut off with primary intent to stop facilitating the suspected scammers and other transnational criminals holed up in those Myanmar border townships. Internationally known for their casino houses, Poipet and Sihanoukville do not rely on power from Thailand, however.
The former NSC chief made his comments following latest concerns among Thai police that those suspected scammers and others might not easily give up and would be eventually tempted to move from Myanmar to Cambodia to continue to perpetrate their transnational crimes.
Those suspected scammers would probably not only hole up in Poipet or Sihanoukville but in Cambodia’s western provinces of Battambang and Pailin sharing a border with Chanthaburi in eastern Thailand, according to Police Inspector-General Pol.Gen. Thatchai Pitanilabut.
If Thaksin pulled the punches over the proposed crackdown on Poipet and Sihanoukville-based crimes preying on the people in Thailand, he would almost certainly be accused of preferring to keep his personal interests intact rather than to maintain public interest, Paradorn said.
His vested interests in regard to Thai-Cambodian business cooperation would allegedly include a questionable profit-sharing, undersea natural resources development project in the Gulf of Thailand for which a bilateral MoU of 2001 had been signed during his previous premiership.
Government critics have earlier charged that Cambodia would probably, unilaterally claim a territorial integrity over the Gulf’s continental shelf around Koh Kood island and other maritime areas off Trat under the pretext of the joint, undersea development scheme by which the Thai billionaire power player would be allegedly inclined to abide.
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Top: Former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, right, talks with former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in Phnom Penh. File photo: VOA Khmer
Front Page: Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, left, is welcomed by former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen upon arrival at Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on September 17, 2011. File photo: AP and published by VOA
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