The recent return of 30 smuggled luxury cars to the United Kingdom was the culmination of cooperation effort involving Thai and British law enforcement, according to the Department of Special Investigation (DSI).
The case began when the National Crime Agency (NCA) in Britain asked the DSI, under a mutual legal assistance treaty, to locate 35 luxury cars that had been stolen from England in 2016 and 2017.
The cars were worth more than £2.4 million, or over 100 million baht, said Pol Maj Yutthana Praedam, the acting director of the DSI.
Officers from a special task force nicknamed “Operation Titanium” that was launched in 2017 raided nine locations in Bangkok and recovered 30 cars, including eight Mercedes-Benzes, five BMW M4s, five Porsches, three Nissan GT-Rs, one Lamborghini Huracan Spyder, a Ford Mustang, a Lexus, and a Mini Cooper. Five other cars are being tracked down.
The vehicles were stolen from the UK by a network led by a Thai national named Intarasak Techaterasiri, alias Boy Unity, and were illegally brought into Thailand. The investigation found Intharasak and 12 accomplices were involved in criminal acts.
According to Pol Maj Yutthana, the suspects had hired and purchased the cars from various rental companies in the UK. They registered the vehicles with UK customs as new cars and exported them from Heathrow Airport to Singapore. The cars were transferred to Thailand as sea cargo.
Investigators found that the syndicate used three companies as nominees for the imports. They had been registered with the Customs Department and rightfully paid annual taxes, entitling them to register the vehicles with the Department of Land Transport (DLT) and resell them.
Intarasak was a director of STT Auto Service Co which had showrooms in the Sukhumvit and Ratchadaphisek areas of Bangkok.
He also imported reassembled cars and sold them to celebrities in show business and politics but the customers could not have them registered with the Department of Land Transport.
He was arrested in June 2017 and brought to the Criminal Court. The court granted him bail but he later skipped it. He was convicted later that year of evading tariffs on imported cars, some of which were declared with unrealistically low prices.
The Supreme Court subsequently sentenced him to four years in jail on tax-evasion charges and a warrant for his arrest was issued on July 5, 2022.
Intharasak was arrested again in August 2022, five years after jumping bail.