Dogmatix

Going to visit people he couldn't give a monkey's about to prepare for elections.

A friend of a friend did it in Phuket. You probably could switch back after the oath. I would check with SB before doing it in case they say your application has to be moved to your province. You never know with Thai officialdoom.

Maybe she was happy with the prestigious mia farang status in the village. Her affair with Sathien seems to have been going on for 2-3 years and he was maybe not her first or only toy boy. Rudolf tolerated and funded her party girl life style, boyfriend and probably a compulsive gambling habit for a long time. There was no suggestion that this was an unhappy marriage. If she had Rudolf murdered and moved Sathien in, her life would have gone downhill rapidly and she may well have been smart enough to figure this out. She would have just become the property of a typical drunken Thai peasant who has already abandoned his own family and would be giving her pressure to hand over her supposed inheritance so he could dole it out to his own bit of fluff on the side.

Are you suggesting they should raise money for the defence on Only Fans?

I am still not a buyer of the family assertions that Sathian was a man of substance based on a sale of cows last year and the sale of land. Aside from these two one-off transactions I see no evidence that he was of higher financial status that the run of the mill subsistence farmers in the area. He was also apparently a drunk and a partyer and probably not a hard worker. If he had 12 cows, it is very likely that he had borrowed money to buy them, maybe at loan shark rates, and had to pay that off. They say he gave 40k to Lakh from that amount but perhaps that was repayment of a loan. Behind many land sales upcountry is a debt to be repaid, even if it was not formally registered on the title deed. Lakh must have enjoyed flaunting her new found mia farang status when she came back to the village with a farang in tow and built a house. They all refer to her as mia farang, not by her name, in the videos and she was drunk and probably a doper and a gambler. Sathian was prepared to abandon his children to be a mia farang's toy boy. So it is logical that he was well supported by her by village standards.

The point about the missing 250K and the bail money is interesting. You would think that, if Lakh got the 250k from Sathien, she would hide it somewhere and get Rudolf to transfer 300k to her and withdraw it from a local bank. Of course, she could argue that they had 300k sitting around the house for whatever reason or even that Sathien gave her the 250k, in the event the land buyers' prints are found on the notes. The buyers may not have touched the notes, if they just withdrew the money from bank in an envelope and didn't count it themselves. But Sathien's prints would be on them, or whoever he had to help him at the Land Office, as everyone counts the money in the Land Office, as it is easy to remove some of the notes from those 100k paper binders that come from the banks and it might not have come straight from a bank. We didn't get the chance to see the back of the title deed to know whether it was unencumbered or whether Sathien had to pay of a mortgage or khai faak contract with the 250k. In my experience of buying land in Isaan, at least half the transactions I have done where with mortgaged or khai faaks that had to be paid off immediately, often leaving almost nothing for the seller. The second Amarin TV video was very interesting but still raises more questions than it answers. It does seem to cast more doubt on Rudolf's story but doesn't prove that he was lying or that he, at least, wasn't acting in self defence, even if the story about the attempted robbery is not true. He looks like a mild mannered retired architect, not like one of those farang Hell's Angels types that go around murdering people in Pattaya or Samui. So I would go with the self defence argument, even if robbery was the motive for Sathian's visit and Lakh is lying through her teeth. Now he is out on bail and preparing his defence, Rudolf may well be reading this thread himself. Perhaps he will share his own theories about what happened and what was going on behind his back.

The Chinese mindset over the last 20 years is to invest their cash in condos. Those who needed mortgages obviously bought at home. Thailand has been a great place for them to park money earned in the black economy.

Thailand has a lot of anti-vaxxers. They were just not very prominent when most people were stepping over each other trying to get vaccines.

There are many things wrong with this. The money laundering was obvious for all to see, especially for this pair who were organising stuff. The fact that they should be able to apply from overseas is also wrong. Thaksin's son's acquittal was also wrong. His only real defence was that many others took the laundry money too and weren't prosecuted (wonder why not). But, as Boss can testify, Thailand has the best prosecutors money can buy.

The Daily News published his full name and a picture of his passport details with nothing redacted except a slight blurr to his face.

Probably not. But the deceased would have had to be completely out of his mind on booze and pills to decide to come to the house with the intention of committing armed robbery against Rudolf who knew him and would obviously recognise him, not to mention the fact that his lover lived there too. The amount of cash Rudolf was likely to keep at home was certainly not worth an armed robbery, unless he intended to murder him and make it look like an armed robbery by arrangement with his lover. A couple of people in the village said she called Sathien and asked him to come and drink at the house, although she denies this. They say he had dealings with cash running into hundreds of thousands and it is possible that he was in the habit of carrying the gun in case he got rolled. Perhaps she did invite him to the house for some reason and he was drunk and got into an altercation with Rudolf, who may have known or been suspicious this was his wife's lover. Although they could probably barely communicate, perhaps Sathien provoked him into saying something that made Sathie lose face and he pulled out his revolver leading to the fight. On the other hand, it is not certain that Rudolf knew he was dead until others arrived which would make it less likely he and the wife would concoct a story to make the killing seem more justifiable. What is certain is that the wife doesn't seem to be telling the truth about her relations with Sathien and the story about her sleeping through the gunshot and commotion is unbelievable. The mother may also have been told to say she didn't see anything either. Until more information comes in, I rest my case.

Perhaps it would indeed be difficult to confuse maa nii with money but I haven't see anything that says Rudolf can speak Thai. He appears not to understand the questions the Amarin TV was asking and his wife translates in pijjin English. He speaks only English with the police but that might be advisable in a critical situation to avoid getting difficult questions in Thai. However, he gives the impression of being unable to understand anything said.

From what the deceased's family are saying the wife would have used the deceased money to pay the 300k bail, if he really had 290k on him which disappeared. Much speculation is possible. Did she lure him to the house to have him killed, as someone in the video claimed? Got bored with him and wanted the the 290k she knew was in his pocket? Did she arrange for him to murder Rudolf and make it look like a robbery? Having witnesses hear him say money money might be helpful here? Did he just get plastered and took some speed that made him feel like superman and decided to go there to rob the farang? Seeing as Rudolf knew him, this would be bizarre but with enough drink and dope, maybe. Who knows?

PPRP has just announced it will nominate Prayut for the next election. Perhaps this guy can set up another party to nominate him. Being the nominee of several parties should increase his chances.

Not his property. His wife's and she might have already hocked it. Certainly a good lesson for anyone who in future might be tempted to marry a bar girl and go and live in her village after sinking savings into a house and land. It was common knowledge in the village that his wife had a lover who had abandoned his wife and children for her which implies he was probably being paid quite well by her with the farang's money. From the interviews it is obvious that Rudolf cannot speak Thai (or Isaan) at all and therefore has no idea what is happening around him every day - only what his poorly educated wife cares to explain. At one point the wife translates the reporter's question for him, "You wanna him die?" Her English is also extremely poor. So their communication can't be very exciting and they obviously have very little in common. When the proverbial hits the fan you are living in a house you paid for that is owned by your wife, who may also be someone else's wife in a village in the sticks surrounded by hostile armed villagers with whom you are unable to communicate. What an perfect set up for retirement!

I noticed that Rudolf's wife has a FB page under her real name ลักษณ์ สารีรูป open to the public but unfortunately not much in it. Rudolf is apparently a friend under the name Ruedi Grüter but his page is not open to the public. One of the wife's friends, an older woman, has some pics of herself fooling around with a pistol with her hand dangerously on the trigger. A thorough police search without warning would probably reveal a lot of illegal guns in villagers' houses. That's something Rudolf should take into account in choosing a new place to live, if he is freed from the case and divorced from his party girl wife.

Still many loose ends to this story. We can summarise what facts and claims have so far come to light. Lakh claims that Sathien was just a drinking companion but others claim that they had been lovers for 2-3 years. Rudolf admitted to police he knew Sathien as one of Lakh's drinking buddies. Perhaps he also knew he was his wife's lover. If so, maybe that bothered him. Maybe it didn't. There is a witness who said the revolver was Sathien's. He didn't know if it was registered or not. Sathien's family have not disputed it was his gun. There are consfusing stories about money. One relative claimed that Sathian had just sold 2 rai of land and had 290k in his pocket which disappeared. It should be easy to verify the sale with the Land Dept and to see if it was an unemcumbered sale for cash or whether it was a redemption and resale of land that was in hock from which he might have netted very little money after settlement of the debt and brokerage fees. His mother had another story about him selling cows for 520,000 and giving away 480,000 to his real wife and 40,000 to the mia farang. Another woman interviewed by Amarin TV claimed the mother was really upset about that because she was the one who took care of the cows and her son did nothing. There is obviously a lot more to the finances of Sathian and Lakh than has come out. They were both hard drinkers and partyers and one of the women interviewed said they were into drugs too. Partying by Thai village ne'er do wells at different people's houses, as Lakh admitted to, normally invovles gambling as the main attraction. If Lakh was a bar girl, she would have got the taste for these activities in Pattaya or somewhere. The same people also get involved in with illegal bookies and loan sharks, borrowing money and laying bets on credit. Gambling debts and loansharks may be a hidden part of this story. Sathian may have told his mother he gave all the money from the cows to both wives but this is not necessarily true but maybe an excuse to explain why he didn't give her any for taking care of the cows. The normal pattern is that a village girl snares a naive farang in a Pattaya beer bar and lugs him home triumphantly to build and house in the village. There she assumes the image of a wealthy mia farang with an idiot husband which makes her attractive to village males who want a bit of free nooky and cash. Him paying her for sex doesn't stack up, as many have pointed out. The story about Sathien having money and therefore no motive to want to rob Rudolf doesn't make much sense and we only have his family's word for that anyway. Perhaps he didn't say money money anyway but said maa nii, maa nii and Rudolf misunderstood. However, there seem to several other possible explanations as to what may have happened, some of which involve Lakh being a wilful party to events. Let's hope the local BiB do a thorough investigation and the true facts will come out.

Many words have been written on this case but we are still non the wise about what actually happened in the massage parlour or with the honey girl. Did he ask for a happy ending but was unhappy with the result and decided to rape her and beat her to death? Is there forensic evidence of the rape. No details about the honey girl, except that he may have attempted to assault her or lure her away. I am not defending his actions but wondering what actually happened and what caused him to become violent. Amphetamines were popular with the Mods, who went on violent sprees in the the UK of the 60s, but don't naturally lead to violence in people without predisposition to it. They mainly make people super alert and confident and want to talk a lot thinking they are being insightful, although they are just burbling nonsense. It seemed he lived with a girlfriend Amnart Charoen who is attempting to help him. So he must have been capable of some sort of a normal relationship before he snapped and decided to throw away his life for no apparent reason. I wonder what he was doing in Khon Kaen quite far from home.

Originally they claimed they needed this money to reimburse government hospitals who treat foreigners that don't pay. Basically they just want to fleece foreign tourists for this money which will largely go to corruption and will come up with different reasons depending on what day of the week it is.

Thailand took the poisoned chalice for face reasons from the British who offered back those bits of the Unfederated Malay States that they didn't want as a sop. Thailand ceded the other Unfederated States in perpetuity and the government got a soft British loan to complete the build out of the railway system. It would have been much better to have left them with the British to become part of Malaysia. The Malays look over the border and see how much more prosperous they are, while the Thai government doesn't spend on development in what is regarded as a rebellious, unsafe region. Since Malaysia doesn't want the burden of this under developed region and it is unviable as a country, the only hope for them is a higher degree of autonomy.

True. Some may recall the bitter infighting between army and police over Thaksin's initiative to take control in the South from the military Southern Border Command, set up by Gen Prem in the 80s, that essentially did police work and controlled the border, and give it back to the police. Financially the bitterness was about who controlled the smuggling rackets in the South, of which oil was the biggest element. But politically the army also felt they were better at keeping the peace. Prem, a Southerner himself, appointed many officers who also came from the South to senior positions and had many of them spend their entire careers there, getting good relations with all the local leaders. Thaksin replaced all these army commanders with police thugs from Bangkok with orders to crush the insurgents within months and of course take control of all the illegal businesses and send a percentage his way. The marine police, part of the Crime Suppression Division took over the oil smuggling from the Navy. Within months the South was in flames.

If they were being legitimately bought in Malaysia and sold to the gangs by the owners who report them stolen and claim on insurance, insurance companies would be getting their government to make a fuss with the Thai government. Also the import duty and excise tax are very high on cars in Malaysia, so they are unlikely to be bought much cheaper there. It may be that they are being soured from the UK and the few other left hand drive countries, as wells as Malaysia, either legally or stolen. There used to be big business importing Benzes and BMWs from the UK, some of which came in legally as grey market cars and some illegally through Malaysia. The grey market dealers benefitted from being able to sell models that were not produced in Thailand. For models that were locally produced customers preferred the completely built up versions rather than Thai local assembly. It is still a bit mysterious and given that it was obviously highly organised, there must have been high level involvement. So we will probably never know all the details.

There used to be big racket stealing cars in Thailand and exporting them to Cambodia. Benzes were most popular but other brands went too and some were exported by individuals who bought on finance, drove it over the border and reported their car stolen and claimed on the insurance. But the Cambodian govt more or less stamped the trade out by banned right had drive cars from the roads.

This starts to make more sense in the context of car thief gangs exporting stolen cars to Thailand. They may be branches of the gangs that export things like Cadaillacs stolen in the US to China or the ones that lift Benzes packed near beaches in Hong Kong and put them on a speed boat to Guangzhou. So the stolen cars are shipped to Malaysia and driven over the border by foreigners with the connivance of corrupt customs. If there are still naive, wealthy Thai crooks willing to pay for a smuggled car, the Ferrari gang can get the first round of profit from the initial sale (cash only of course) but most of those interested in smuggled cars must be plugged into the police/criminal network and would know what will happen, if they purchase one. The foreign drivers are never caught at the border and fly out immediately without being arrested. Joe seizes the car maybe just parked in the street somewhere without implicating anyone. The customs pay a bounty and the car is sold for a low price at a rigged auction and then resold at a profit with legal registration papers. Bascically they are involved in car theft, smuggling, fraudulently obtaining bounties for solving their own crimes, fifixing auctions and ultimately fencing stolen goods and laundering money for crooks who buy the legitimised stolen cars and can resell them. There is no mention of arrests of the people involved in the smuggling and distribution of 410 cars or of any attempts by the Thai government to return the stolen ones to their owners.

That wealthy Thai business families are using offshore companies is a total non-story. There is nothing illegal about it and they are probably not even avoiding Thai tax. The earlier Panama papers revealed Thai politicians and civil servants using offshore companies. Now that was interesting but nothing was done to investigate it, other than probably some negotiations and brown envelopes passed to ensure no investigations.