Police will press an additional charge, collusion to bribe, against construction magnate Premchai Karnasuta and also against his driver Yong Dodkrua in the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary poaching case.
Pol Maj Gen Kamol Rianracha, commander of the Counter Corruption Division, said on Thursday that police had summonsed Mr Premchai and Mr Yong to answer the charge at 10am on March 19 at the divisional office.
The additional charge follows the interrogation of Wichien Chinawong, chief of the Western Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, at the division on Wednesday. Mr Wichien is the senior official who arrested Mr Premchai and his three hunting companions on Feb 4.
Mr Yong, 65, had asked officials to let Mr Premchai go and accept a bribe, and tools were offered to make their job easier, according to Pol Maj Gen Kamol.
According to earlier reports one of the officials who arrested Mr Premchai, Mr Yong and the two others recorded a conversation that included the offer of a bribe.
On Wednesday, police charged Mr Premchai, president of Italian-Thai Development Plc, with bribing state officials, having unlicensed weapons and being in illegal possession of the carcasses of protected wildlife.
Mr Premchai and his three companions have been charged on nine counts relating to the poaching of protected animals at world heritage rated Thungyai Naresuan sanctuary in Thong Pha Phum district of Kanchanaburi.
Investigators have already charged Mr Premchai with trying to bribe state officials who detained him in a no-camping area of the sanctuary.
The 63-year-old businessman and his three companions were arrested at their campsite on the night of Feb 4. They were found in possession of the butchered carcasses of nine protected wild animals.
The dead animals included an endangered black Indochinese leopard, its pelt riddled with bullet holes, and what were initially said to be a Kalij pheasant and protected barking deer, but later identified forensically as a silver pheasant and a wild boar.
Meat and bones from the leopard were found in a stew pot at the campsite. They also had three long-barrelled guns, including a shotgun, and ammunition.
