Six years ago I wrote a story about Srisuwan Janya on this blog (see the link: https://www.thailandblog.nl/achtergrond/thailands-meest-bekende-lastpak/). He has been fighting corruption by filing charges for a long time. It concerned political issues, official problems and business abuses. Now he has been accused of extortion himself. This is a quick summary, read the full post in the Bangkok Post articles, below.
Natthakit Khongthip, director general of the Rice Department at the ministry of agriculture, filed a complaint against Srisuwan. He accused Srisuwan of demanding 3 million baht (later negotiated down to 1.5 million) for dropping charges against him.
Police raided Srisuwan's house in Pathum Thani when an amount of cash extortion money was delivered there. Srisuwan's wife noticed the police officers and threw the bag of money over the fence to the neighbors.
Natthakit himself had previously made a video when he handed over 150.000 baht in cash to Srisuwan and two other suspects. He turned that video over to police as evidence for his extortion charges. The two other suspects were Yoswaris Chuklom and Phimnattha Chiraphutthiphak, both affiliated with the United Thai Nation Party, the party of former Prime Minister Prayut.
Natthakit said he was convinced he had never done anything wrong, but had gone along with the extortion attempt to gather evidence of it.
Meanwhile, a fourth suspect has been arrested. Police believe this case is just the tip of the iceberg. There would be many more cases of extortion and the gang(s) of extortionists would be much larger than first thought. See the last two sources mentioned below.
Source reference:
From 2017
Meet Thailand's most famous troublemaker | Thai blog
Bangkok Post – Crusader Srisuwan faces extortion charge
Arrest of a fourth suspect
Bangkok Post – 4th judgment in 'extortion' case
Extortion rings are bigger
The best and overly fanatical boy is sometimes the biggest r... creepy. Squeezing something with the cat.