The chairman of the lower house’s police oversight committee inspected two Pattaya sites where illegal casinos were operating under the noses of law enforcement, sparking the city’s recent coronavirus outbreak.
MP Nirot Suntornleka, members of the police commission and Pattaya’s city employees on Feb. 6 visited now-vacant buildings behind the Numchai electronics shop on Sukhumvit Road and in the Arunothai Community.
The first casino didn’t start out that way. First, the building opened as a royal barge museum, but went bust. It then became a restaurant, later modified into a casino with about 100 sq. meters of floor space on the ground floor. The Soi Arunothai commercial building likewise was modified illegally, without permits, to house a casino.
Both had operated in Pattaya unfettered by police for some time before Covid-19 outbreaks were traced back to the gambling dens.
Nirot, whose team also visited the infamous warehouse in Rayong that ignited the East’s serious coronavirus outbreak in December, vowed that all illegal casinos nationwide would be wiped out and that failure to police them or regulate building modifications would be prosecuted.
