The military has seized more than 3,900 rai of forest reserve land in Nakhon Ratchasima's Sung Noen district from an influential figure who was found to have long occupied the land using illegally obtained title deeds. One suspect was also detained.
Sung Noen is a small district just west of Korat city, but military officials say it is the home of a gigantic land scandal.
A combined team of soldiers from the 2nd Army, officials from the Office of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) and the Lands Department which inspected the land confirmed the seized land was part of the Sung Noen Forest Reserve, Col Sommai Busaba, who headed the encroachment suppression operation, said Monday.
The land seizure followed a complaint to the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) by Wan Lertsanoi, a representative of villagers claiming to be affected by the land encroachment.
In his complaint, Mr Wan said the villagers in Ban Nong Kung and Ban Nong Kaeo had been barred by Ammarin Yousukdee from entering the land which the villagers had long known was part of a forest reserve.
The 2nd Army launched a probe into the complaint and discovered by using aerial maps provided by the Land Department that the land occupied by Mr Ammarin was in the reserve, said Col Sommai.
Before Mr Ammarin began claiming ownership of the land, about eight families worked in the area as legal loggers supplying wood to the State Railway of Thailand for use as fuel, said Col Sommai.
Later Mr Ammarin, who also owns the Ammarin Resort Hotel in Pak Thong Chai district of the same province, showed up claiming ownership of the land, said Col Sommai.
During Monday's raid Mr Ammarin appeared and presented several documents to support his claim of ownership.
He told the authorities he had been making use of the land since 1992. At present, he grows sugar cane on the land, supplying the product to a sugar mill in Khon Buri district.
Mr Ammarin has reaped more than 100 million baht in benefits by exploiting the land as a sugar cane plantation and collecting rent from villagers over the past several years, said Col Sommai.
Officials who examined title deeds produced by Mr Ammarin found some irregularities with the documents, he said.
This included the discovery that some of the documents used in applications for title deeds for parts of the seized land were issued for land somewhere else. Some documents for other parts of the seized land have also been revoked by state agencies concerned.
Col Sommai said Mr Ammarin was also found to have charged villagers a high land rent of 2,000 baht per rai while paying only five baht per rai in tax to the tambon Takhu local administration organisation which has jurisdiction over the area where the land is located.
The NCPO would petition the PACC to investigate all officials who may have been concerned in the case to find those responsible for issuing the title deeds for the Sung Noen land despite the obvious irregularities in the documents involved.
The local tambon organisation would also be investigated for charging an unusual tax rate on the land, he said.
The NCPO was also investigating a high-level official in the Lands Department who was found to have sent an urgent letter to Sung Noen's land office instructing it to issue the title deeds to the illegal land owner within a week.
It is alleged that local businessman Ammarin Yousukdee took illegal control and worked this land, all 3,900 rai of which is national forest preserve. (Photo by Tawatchai Khemgumnerd)