Earlier, on September 3, 2012, a roaring black Ferrari collided with a police motorcycle in central Bangkok, throwing the officer to the ground and dragging his body down the dark street before leaving.
Police say a sports car oil leak led investigators to the luxury home of one of Thailand’s wealthiest families, co-owners of the Red Bull energy drink empire.
According to police, the guy behind the wheel of the Ferrari was Vorayuth “Boss” Yoovidhya, the heir to a circle of relatives of fortune that Forbes estimates at $20.2 billion.
Vorayuth was then charged with five counts, adding speeding, hit-and-run and careless driving that caused the death, however, the case stalled for years as the billionaire descendant continually omitted or postponed prosecutors’ subpoenas. Authorities left Thailand in 2017.
For years, the circle of relatives of the policeman killed in the accident, the sergeant. Major Wichien Klanprasert remained in limbo.
Then, on 23 July, Colonel Sampan Luangsajjakul of the Royal Thai Police demonstrated that the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) had to withdraw all the fees that opposed Vorayuth, who according to the police were 30 years old at the time of the accident, not 27 years. old as they said earlier.
The resolve to withdraw tariffs has brought the case back to the point, and infuriated Thais, who have long felt that the country’s formula unfairly favors the rich.
Some have called for a boycott of Red Bull products. Others said the resolution not to prosecute Vorayuth was the most recent and heinous confirmation of a perceived culture of impunity of Thailand’s elites.
“Public sentiment is that there are other criteria for the poor,” said Ekachai Chainuvati, a law professor at Bangkok’s Siam University.
Since then, public tension has increased, causing investigations through the Attorney General’s Office, the police, the shrinking space of Parliament and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, who has pledged to “ensure justice in Thai society without dividing it by social classes.”
From there, the story was dramatically replaced: from the death of a key witness to the office of the Attorney General to order the police to investigate Vorayuth with two possible fees that can lead to his arraignment.
Nevertheless, the young heir and his immediate circle of relatives have remained silent. But at a time of renewed protests over political change, many are no easier to do for the movements of the rich and tough in the most sensitive of Thai society.
Best known by his nickname “Boss,” Vorayuth grew up in one of Thailand’s top families. Her grandfather, the late Chaleo Yoovidhya, created the Energy Drink Red Bull, a sparkling blend of vitamins, sugar and caffeine, and incorporated it into a global empire.
Born to deficient Chinese immigrants in northern Thailand, the self-taught billionaire began his career promoting pharmaceuticals. In 1956, he founded his own company, TC Pharmaceutical, which developed over-the-counter drugs for headaches and fever. Chaleo soon became convinced that there was a bigger market for energy drinks. He invented Krating Daeng, a sugary caffeine-based drink that first became popular with day laborers and truck drivers.
In 1984, Chaleo teamed up with Austrian businessman Dietrich Mateschitz and then presented Red Bull, a gaseous edition of Krating Daeng that would be a hit with athletes, revelers, academics and night staff around the world.
After Chaleo’s death in 2012, his son Chalerm Yoovidhya took over the company, according to Forbes. Chalerm and his circle of relatives lately occupy a place of moment on the list of the 50 richest Thais on the site, the agro-industrial giant of the Chearavanont brothers.
Yoovidhya’s family circle owns a portion of Red Bull’s global business, which sold 7.5 billion cans of beverages in 171 countries in 2019. The empire of the circle of relatives includes genuine real estate interests, restaurants, a winery and the only official importer of Ferrari cars in Thailand
The parent company of the Thai Red Bull logo, TCP Group, has tried to distance itself from the controversy surrounding the alleged crime. In a statement, he said that Vorayuth “never assumed a role in tcp Group’s control and day-to-day operations, was never a shareholder, nor held any executive position within TCP Group.
Like his father and grandfather, Vorayuth kept a low profile and was little known to Thais before the 2012 accident.
When police followed the oil leak to the Yoovidhya neighborhood, an anonymous guy at the scene first claimed he was driving the Ferrari at the time of the accident, police said at the time.
He then fined him $200 for making false statements. Vorayuth was taken to the police station for questioning, where he allegedly admitted driving the car and hitting the motorcycle, but claimed to have been suddenly cut off by the bicycle, police said at the time. He was released on bail of 500,000 baht, about $16,000.
In the following years, Vorayuth did not appear in court to receive several subpoenas from prosecutors, and his lawyer claimed he was ill or on business trips abroad. The prosecutor, however, issued an arrest warrant against him in April 2017, nearly five years after the incident. But he was too late: Vorayuth had already left Thailand, police said.
Interpol has issued a foreign search that opposes it, but no longer appears on the site. Vorayuth’s whereabouts are officially unknown.
CNN tried to touch Vorayuth and his immediate circle of relatives through his lawyer, but got no answer.
For a long time, the opposite case of Vorayuth was pending.
By September 2017, the statute of limitations had expired at 4 of the fees, adding hasty and hit-and-run. Police had until 2027 to pursue the maximum rate of gravity: careless driving that causes death.
That is, until the Attorney General’s Office dropped the case, as CNN reported on July 23.
Net Narksook, the prosecutor in charge of the case, provided no explanation as to why the resolution, however, a letter from the Attorney General informing police of the resolution suggests that it was based on “new evidence” that Vorayuth did not rush the resolution time. fatal accident.
According to the letter dated June 12, Vorayuth was first charged by police at an estimated speed of 177 kilometers depending on the hour (110 miles depending on the hour), well above the speed limit of 80 km/h (50 mph). .
However, the letter indicates that the police expert who first assessed the speed of the Ferrari replaced his estimate in 2016 of 177 km / has 79 km / h, just below the speed limit. That’s not how I’d reached the lowest figure.
Two “additional witnesses” told prosecutors in December 2019 that the Ferrari was only travelling from 50 to 60 km/h (31 to 37 mph) at the time of the accident, according to the document.
One of the witnesses, Jaruchart Mardthong, claimed that the officer was driving a pickup truck and saw his motorcycle suddenly cut off in front of Vorayuth’s Ferrari just before the accident, according to the letter.
Jaruchart first made a call to the police a few weeks after the accident, but was asked to make another one last December, according to the Attorney General’s Office and the police. He was expected to be called to testify, as several investigators read about the reasons why the fees were withdrawn.
However, in the early morning of July 30, Jaruchart also died in a motorcycle accident.
The death of a key witness at the height of the controversy rekindled public turmoil.
CCTV footage reported on CNN showed a policeman known as Jaruchart driving his motorcycle on an empty road in the northern city of Chiang Mai, before colliding with a motorcycle traveling in the same direction.
Lt. General Prachuab Wongsuk, commissioner of the Fifth Region of the Provincial Police, said the two men met that night while drinking in a bar, and Jaruchart agreed to stick to the location of his new acquaintance.
Police say their investigations suggest jaruchart lost his motorcycle and cut off the wheel to the other driver, who survived the accident.
Prachuab said the collision gave the impression of being an accident, but police did not dismiss an imaginable “murder motive.” “We’re investigating the suspects around Jaruchart,” he said.
For some observers, the timing is curious: Jaruchart’s death came a day after Prime Minister Prayut announced that he had established a committee to investigate the abandonment of Vorayuth’s case.
Others raised some other points of suspicion: Jaruchart’s cell phone had disappeared after the turn of fate. Jaruchart worked for the owner of a local football club. Lieutenant Prachuab told CNN that some other workers at the club told police that he took Jaruchart’s cell phone after the twist of fate and erased all the photos. He said he later sought to remove any evidence from his deal with Jaruchart because he would run for a local election and did not need to be related to the Red Bull scandal, Prachuab said.
As the hypothesis revolved about the cause of the incident, Prayut ordered that Jaruchart cremation scheduled for August 2 be stopped and Chiang Mai police seized his body for an autopsy.
The post-mortem moment showed that Jaruchart suffered a skull fracture, a spleen fracture, a fractured rib and bleeding in the brain and abdomen, injuries consistent with a traffic accident, the government said. The effects of the first autopsy have been published.
Then, on Tuesday, August 4, turn.
The OAG committee cited more “new evidence” – the expert opinion of Sathon Vijarnwannaluk, professor of physics at Chulalongkorn University, who estimated that the Ferrari was circulating at 177 km/h, which corresponds to the initial conclusion drawn by the police.
The committee said it had heard interviews Vijarnwannaluk had given to several Thai media outlets last week in which he claimed to have been part of the initial police team to read about the accident. He claimed that his team had used CCTV photographs to calculate Ferrari’s speed and concluded that he was traveling at 177 km/h.
The Committee of the Attorney General stated that Vijarnwannaluk’s assessment was not included in the police file and that the prosecutor was therefore unad on top of his estimate when dropping the charges. The committee said the prosecutor had only noticed the estimate of 177 km/h anywhere in the police report.
An OAG spokesman said Vijarnwannaluk’s expert opinion led the committee to propose that the police order the OAG to reopen the investigation into the speed of the Vorayuth Ferrari at the time of the turn of fate on the imaginable careless driving rate that causes death. prayut Bejraguna, deputy spokesman for the BVG.
The committee also advised police to investigate any other drug charges opposing Vorayuth, as he said blood tests conducted after the turn of fate revealed the drug lines, Prayut said.
On Monday, the Attorney General’s Office announced that it was implementing any of the recommendations and gave police investigators 10 days to record their report.
“The main message we are sending is that the Attorney General’s Office has revived the case, given it a new life, so that it can … bring ‘Boss’ back into the justice system,” Prayut of the Attorney General’s Office said.
The scandal not only provoked the wrath of Thai society, but deepened the rupture in a circle of relatives who has long remained silent on the subject.
In a rare month ago, some members of Vorayuth’s long circle of relatives apologized “for the news of our circle of member relatives that has provoked the anger, hatred and discontent increasingly expressed in society.”
“We will have to publish this letter to express our regret for this incident and verify our respect for a formula of justice that deserves to do justice to all without discrimination,” he said.
The circle of relatives of the police officer killed in the 2012 turn of fate expressed astonishment at the more recent turn of events. In an interview with “Hone-Krasae,” a popular Thai TV show, his sister-in-law Nattanun Klanprasert said he was surprised to be informed that new evidence had emerged.
He said police had already told him there were no eyewitnesses to the accident.
“Now, Sergeant Mr. Wichien has become the one who committed an oversight and caused the accident. Was he wrong?” he said, raising his voice.
The rates opposed to Vorayuth have still been reinstated, however, it is still sought.
Vicha Mahakun, director of the independent investigative committee established through Prime Minister Prayut, said Wednesday that the arrest warrant for Vorayuth is still in force, after a court asked police to withdraw their previous request for revocation.
Police have until 20 August to interview witnesses and write a report for the Attorney General’s Office; only then can a case that has intrigued and angered the Thai public for years can take another step towards a conceivable judicial conclusion.
Terms of the privacy policy
KMIZ-TV FCC Public Archive
Don’t sell my information