Police coy about probing inhouse loan scam

A mugshot of Pol Sr SgtMajor Chanakant Booranaphong

The scam, which had gone on for a decade, and the escape of Pol Senior SgtMajor Chanakant Booranaphong, who has been absent from service for more than a month, would have remained outside the public purview hadn't a woman - a civilian victim of the scam - recently told the story to the media. She also filed a complaint with the police.

Pol MajGeneral Suphorn Phansue, the MPB's spokesman tasked with overseeing the cooperative's operation, said he saw nothing wrong about the scam.

"Neither is any investigation into it needed nor is action against anyone necessary. It is merely loan contracts between lenders and borrowers becoming problematic, and their disputes would be solved in civil cases," he added.

According to police sources, the loan scheme had been operated unlawfully in parallel with the cooperative's operation. Junior policemen in need of urgent money, who could not wait for the usual monthlong procedure to obtain the cooperative loans, paid a 5percent "service fee" for the loans to Chanakant.

Chanakant later asked many senior policemen to "invest" in her scheme, in return for lucrative returns of 5 per cent, paid twice - on the 15th and 30th of every month. The monthly payment was made regularly for almost 10 years, making her loan scheme trusted among senior policemen, drawing more and more investments from them.

Before she went missing, Chanakant stopped paying the monthly returns in April and May. She said she there were no returns and now the principal amount was all gone.

The civilian victim, a vendor of fruit juices who asked not to be named, said some senior officers had called her and criticised her for going public about the matter. "The officers working in the cooperative are criticising me for telling the media about the scheme coming to a halt and the main operator going missing. They say it's an internal affair which will be dealt with internally."

The victim said she could not figure out how the scam would be exposed and how anybody responsible for it would be brought to justice. "To this day, no senior policeman has come out and admitted providing money for the scam," she said.

Another police source said more than 20 senior policemen and their fellow civilian "investors" had now lost more than Bt10 million to the scam, including two active police generals and a few other retired generals.