Immigration police have arrested a 36 year old Chinese businesswoman at a Sukhumvit address in Bangkok on a warrant issued in China, where she is accused of customs fraud that cost the state more than 500 million baht.
Officers from the Immigration Bureau’s Division 1 investigation unit detained her at her home in Phra Khanong, Khlong Toei district, on Friday, October 23.
Police have not named her. Thai reports give only the surname Wu and mark it as a pseudonym, so it is not used here.
The warrant accuses her of helping to set up an import-export company dealing in clothing, which the Chinese case describes as a front for tax fraud.
The methods listed run from misdeclared tariff classifications and false declarations to forged certificates of origin, forged documents, smuggling, destroyed customs seals and false claims for tax refunds.
The offences are alleged to have taken place in Shanghai, after which she is said to have fled to Bangkok and stayed on.
The arrest came off a list of wanted foreign nationals passed to Thai police by the Chinese embassy in Bangkok through the Royal Thai Police’s Foreign Affairs Division.
Pol Lt Gen Nopsin Phoonsawat, the Immigration Bureau commissioner, said the bureau would keep working against transnational crime in Thailand, where the embassy lists have driven several recent arrests.
She was handed to Immigration Division 3 and faces proceedings here before any move to return her to China.
The bureau has made a run of arrests on Chinese warrants this month. On October 16 it held a 37 year old Chinese man over a mule account network that police said moved about 2 billion baht through more than 133 bank accounts.
The next day officers detained another Chinese man at a Huai Khwang restaurant who had allegedly paid 100,000 baht to cross the Mekong from Laos, and on Thursday they raided three houses in Sai Mai and held 14 people over an online gambling and scam network.
Any deportation would follow the Thai proceedings rather than replace them, and no date has been set for either. None of the allegations has been tested in court, in China or in Thailand.
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