Thai Officials Find Another Order For Billions Of Tablets

[webfact]

Officials find another order for billions of tablets

Piyanuch Thamnukasetchai,

Ekkapong Praditpong,

Kannika Wijitsakolkan

The Nation

Shipping firms to be charged for falsely declaring shipment in custom

BANGKOK: -- Investigators checking the premises of an electronicsparts importing company found an order to purchase 10 billion tablets from China. The firm is believed to have been involved in making false customs declarations to smuggle 40 tonnes of pseudoephedrine drugs from South Korea previously.

Meanwhile, apart from labelling all "callcentre scams" as special cases yesterday, the Special Case Committee also agreed to have the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) take up and investigate all pseudoephedrinesmuggling cases.

DSI chief Tarit Pengdith will lead the investigation to be conducted jointly by the DSI, public prosecutors, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other related agencies.

Tarit said that besides the contract to purchase 40tonnes of the drug reportedly from a South Korean firm by UTAC Thai, the officials also found another purchase order for 10 billion tablets from China. He said the contract was two years old and showed that the first lot of 2 million tablets had been delivered on July 31, 2009. The DSI chief went on to say that the tablets ordered from both South Korea and China were of the COLCOLCO brand.

The DSI has also found images of those who moved the medicines out of the cargo building, he said, adding that initially investigators would hold the shipping company responsible because in the import documents, the shipment was falsely declared as antibiotics and electronic parts. However, the shipment was not falsely declared in South Korea because there the drug is not illegal.

Tarit added that UTAC Thai has been insisting that its name is being used falsely and that it has nothing to do with the crime. The DSI chief said that investigators needed to visit South Korea to inquire about the purchase contract and the import procedure.

A DSI source said that both Thai and South Korean FDA officers had detected false customs declarations made in Suvarnabhumi Airport from February 23, 2010 to May 8, 2010 of shipments ordered by UTAC Thai. The shipping firms involved are IndoChina Inter Group, Two Supply, Oversea Product and Chanthawat Enterprise.

Meanwhile, in Lamphun's Muang district, police yesterday searched for more documents at Sirivej Hospital after finding that this 10bed facility had ordered more than a million tablets of pure and mixed pseudoephedrine tablets last year but did not report the purchases to the provincial health office.

Sirivej Hospital director Dr Chote Nisung yesterday insisted that the hospital staff had nothing to do with the forged purchase orders for the pills and clarified that the hospital had ordered 350,000 pseudoephedrine tablets last January and February from the firms Asean Pharmaceutical and Milano Factory. He added that this shipment was meant to cover the entire year and the hospital did not order any more after that. In March, the hospital received 100,000 tablets from Milano Factory and 150,000 from Asean Pharmaceutical, but since these drugs were reportedly not ordered, the hospital told the two companies to pick them up, which they did, he said.

Chote added that the FDA had found that the hospital had ordered some 900,000 tablets from the same two companies on nine occasions from May to September, even though no such orders had been made. He went on to say that since the hospital had not ordered the pills and had not received them, they did not report it to the provincial health office. Insisting that the hospital staff had nothing to do with the crime, he added that a gang of drugtraffickers may have used the hospital's name to order the drug and salespeople from pharmaceutical companies might be at fault. He explained that this was the reason why the hospital had filed a police complaint against the two firms.

Provincial Police Region 5 deputy chief Pol MajGeneral Chamnan Ruadraew said his investigation team had made good progress in its probe into the Central Memorial Hospital in Chiang Mai and Sirivej Hospital in Lamphun, and that it would soon seek an arrest warrant for at least one more suspect.

-- The Nation 2012-04-26

[Buchholz]

Thai Officials Find Another Order For Billions Of Tablets

Investigators checking the premises of an electronics parts importing company found an order to purchase 10 billion tablets from China.

Hopefully, we won't someday see that same headline and introductory paragraph on the tablet computers for children program...

but I suppose it's always possible.

Regarding these other types of tablets, the amounts involved in these drug-manufacturing operations are staggering and the whole business needs proper investigating. Good luck with that.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Buchholz

[Ricardo]

Hub of mysteriously-disappearing pseudoephedrine-tablets ?

[noitom]

The Nation is still pontificating about this instead of doing its investigative journalism and smoking out the Thai Mr. Bigs until they are carted off in handcuffs and perp walked. Why doesn't The Nation understand that continual pontificating about the same thing over and over only serves to reaffirm criminal operations with impunity? The Nation doesn't seem to understand this basic fact.

[Pseudolus]

The Nation is still pontificating about this instead of doing its investigative journalism and smoking out the Thai Mr. Bigs until they are carted off in handcuffs and perp walked. Why doesn't The Nation understand that continual pontificating about the same thing over and over only serves to reaffirm criminal operations with impunity? The Nation doesn't seem to understand this basic fact.

They can't though because even if the people they name are responsible, they can still be held for liable and get done in court; hence no investigative reporting here. All they could do is investigate it and then take their information to the police.... well you know how that would end....senior regional brass telling their kids that they each have a new merc and condo.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Pseudolus

[Para]

40 tonne of psudo will net a return of around 20 tonne of crystal meth which is a LOT of ICE.

Someone will be hurting big time over this.

[heiwa]

There is good reason the mob and police don't want drugs legalised.

Edited April 26, 2012 by heiwa

[khunron13]

Silly me! When I read the headline, I thought this article was about the computers for kids. Too many scams, conspiracies and corruption to keep up with....555

[OzMick]

I await Tarit declaring that those who ordered these tablets are not guilty of a crime because they did not intend to take them personally.

If that sounds ridiculous, compare it to his edict re perjury.

[fstarbkk]

Hub of mysteriously-disappearing pseudoephedrine-tablets ?

LOL - More like the "Bermuda Triangle of Pseudoephedrine"!

[Ricardo]

Hub of mysteriously-disappearing pseudoephedrine-tablets ?

LOL - More like the "Bermuda Triangle of Pseudoephedrine"!

'Counterfeit-Bermuda Triangle of Pseudoephedrine' ?

[Pseudolus]

Hub of mysteriously-disappearing pseudoephedrine-tablets ?

LOL - More like the "Bermuda Triangle of Pseudoephedrine"!

'Counterfeit-Bermuda Triangle of Pseudoephedrine' ?

Sort of implied by "Thailand, the hub of Pseudoephedrine....Tablets.....ethics...( fill in the last word as needed) "

[wpcoe]

Holy moly. Ten billion tablets PLUS 40 tons of tablets???

How much yaba would that produce?

TEN BILLION is an AWFUL LOT of tablets! Using an estimated population of 70 million for the entire nation, that's 142 tablets for each man, woman and child. Then add in 40 tons more?

[ginjag]

I have been here for yonks--and it is getting more of a cock-up each year---this last year being the biggest. (excuse the expression cock-up)

[belg]

10 billion tablets ? so that makes 1.5 tablets per person on earth

do they mean wifi or ya ba

55555555555555555

[allan michaud]

40 tons? at around 1 million grams per ton (depending on your version of a ton) that's a hell lot of tablets. Are these numbers correct? I don't know for sure but I thought most pills were not much more than half a gram, even if they are 1 gram each that's 40,000,000 tablets. Seriously.

Sounds like a huge international problem that maybe WHO or UN should be looking at.

Some really powerful people are going to need to be jailed if anyone is to take the police follow up seriously.

[ianf]

Silly me! When I read the headline, I thought this article was about the computers for kids. Too many scams, conspiracies and corruption to keep up with....555

Me too!!!!

[NastyNick]

40 tons? at around 1 million grams per ton (depending on your version of a ton) that's a hell lot of tablets. Are these numbers correct? I don't know for sure but I thought most pills were not much more than half a gram, even if they are 1 gram each that's 40,000,000 tablets. Seriously.

Sounds like a huge international problem that maybe WHO or UN should be looking at.

Thailand population is 69 million and 7% admitted to using meth so lets say 4.5 million people smoke in total and each session is about 3-5 pills so that's what 14 million - 20 million pills per day get smoked maximum if every user in the country decides to party on same day. So basically, all those tons probably would last for a part of Songkran.

[sirchai]

My hamster died laughing while on his wheel trying to produce electricity for my PC......

Why should they???

[sirchai]

"BANGKOK: -- Investigators checking the premises of an electronicsparts importing company found an order to purchase 10 billion tablets from China. The firm is believed to have been involved in making false customs declarations to smuggle 40 tonnes of pseudoephedrine drugs from South Korea."

10 billion tablets? Tablet PCs for all citizens on this planet. The 40 tonnes= 40,000 kg pseuduephedrine is enough to train all teachers how to use the tablets when the ASEAN community starts. Pseudo for all..............