Police and Agriculture Ministry officials descended on a Pattaya house where an associate of the country’s farm minister is accused of hoarding 200 million medical face masks to sell to China amid a shortage in Thailand.
Nongprue police audit and monitoring officers and representatives from the Agriculture and Co-operatives ministry were turned away at the Patta Village house of Sornsuvee Pooraveenasawatchari March 9, with his girlfriend saying he wasn’t at home and there were no masks there.
Police are seeking a search warrant check the house. One wonders why they didn’t get a search warrant before going to the house the first time.
Sornsuvee is at the heart of the latest political scandal to rock the government of former military officers. He was photographed meeting with an aide to Deputy Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Thamanat Prompow at a Bangkok hotel, purportedly to discuss selling the cache of masks overseas, even as Thailand struggles to meet demand for masks amid the panic over the Covid-19 coronavirus and new laws restricting their trade.
Thamanat denied any impropriety, saying close aide Pittinant Rak-iad was advised by a friend to meet Sornsuvee, but no deal was made. A skeptical public and even political allies of Thamanat’s ruling Palang Pracharath Party are demanding the deputy minister’s resignation amid the stench of corruption.
Police wanting to question Sornsuvee were frustrated by his girlfriend, identified only as Pang, who said Sornsuvee left the night before for Chanthaburi and could not be reached. She said there were no masks at the house and reporting of him hoarding masks was false.
Earlier he said a video he posted to his Facebook page showing him with boxes of masks was not what it seemed. He said the masks weren’t his, he didn’t know who owned them and he didn’t have money to buy them in any case.
However, Sornsuvee’s Facebook – which he later deleted – included a sales pitch to Chinese buyers or agents for Chinese hospitals to purchase the masks with a minimum order of 1 million pieces for 14 million baht.
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