Police arrested a man with gold bars worth about 28 million baht that were to be smuggled acoss the border to Myanmar on Tuesday night.
The 37-year-old, identified only as Chart, was detained at a checkpoint in tambon Nong Lu of Sangkhlaburi district about 6pm on Tuesday.
Acing on a tip-off, police searched the man’s Toyota pickup truck, which was registered in Kanchanaburi. They found a bag containing 18 gold bars, each weighing one kilogramme.
The driver, native of tambon Nong Lu, told police that a woman named Mayo who owned a gold shop across the border in Phaya Tongsu township hired him to buy gold bars from a shop in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
He was to hand the gold over to a Myanmar smuggler at a temple near the Three Pagodas Pass.
He had done the same thing twice before – four gold bars worth 6.4 million baht on March 3 and five bars worth 7.4 million baht last Friday, according to police.
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Police at Sangkhlaburi station pose for photos with the suspected smuggler and the 18 seized gold bars, on Tuesday. (Photo: Piyarat Chongcharoen)
