A police raid on a building in downtown Bangkok has exposed a Chinese woman with Thai citizenship by marriage and a long history of alleged involvement in fraud, human trafficking, surrogacy and document forgery.
Details were released onTuesday by deputy police chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn.
He identified the woman only as Ms Navaporn, 53, and said she was arrested on Saturday at a building on Silom road in Bangkok's Bang Rak district.
On April 4, police had searched the five-storey building. They found seven foreigners holding non-citizen identification cards, or pink cards. They also discovered rooms and equipment arranged for Thai women who were surrogate mothers for Chinese people.
Further investigation revealed that the building belonged to Ms Navaporn. She allegedly brought foreigners into Thailand and registered them as being domiciled in the building, giving false information and fake documents to authorities showing that they were her relatives.
By doing this, she managed to get them pink cards.
Police obtained a court warrant and arrested Ms Navaporn on Saturday. She was charged with falsifying and using fake official documents, giving false information to authorities and using fake visa stamps on international travel documents.
Pol Gen Surachate said Ms Navaporn was a Chinese national who obtained Thai citizenship after marrying a Thai man. She later divorced him and married a Chinese man, and they had three children. The children had Thai citizenship, because of their mother, with the right to own and operate a business.
Ms Navaporn had previously been charged with duping Chinese nationals to invest in businesses in Thailand, he said. That case was brought against her by Prawet police station.
Moreover, according to information obtained by police from Chinese authorities, Ms Navaporn had been involved in human trafficking in China, Thailand and Cambodia for about 10 years.
She owned many companies in the names of her relatives and her children as well as blocks of land and luxury cars. The woman allegedly acted as a coordinator, facilitating the illegal operations of Chinese investors, helping them obtain pink cards and finding surrogate mothers for them, Pol Gen Surachate said.
Her financial transactions were still being unravelled, he said, and anyone found involved in her illegal activities, be they Chinese or Thai, or government officials, would face legal action. Once adequate evidence had been compiled, the Anti-Money Laundering Office would be asked to freeze her assets for examination.
Pol Gen Surachate said some officials at Bang Rak district office had already been found to have colluded with Ms Navaporn in her illegal activities. Court warrants would be sought for their arrest.
The Interior Ministry permanent secretary would also be asked to check whether Ms Navaporn's Thai citizenship had been obtained legally, he added.
According to Lui Sae Kua, a reporter for a Chinese news agency, Ms Navaporn's Chinese name is Zhou Qiong. The woman had a history of cheating Chinese people, both from mainland China and Taiwan, to the tune of more than 100 million baht, Ms Lui said.