Brothel raid reveals kickbacks
Print Edition
A RAID on a Bangkok brothel notorious for “soapy massages” has found underage sex workers and logbooks detailing large kickbacks to corrupt cops and officials, investigators said yesterday.
More than 100 officers from Thailand’s Interior Ministry raided Nataree Massage, which is in downtown Bangkok and popular with locals and foreigners.
During the raid they found documents detailing alleged payments worth thousands of dollars to police and city officials.
“The account book with the hush money is very clear in detailing which agencies and persons received the money. Most are police and police agencies,” Ronnarong Thipsiri, director of the Territorial Defense Office, which was involved in the raid, told reporters.
“We did not inform police ahead of the raid because we had information that they were benefiting from this operation,” Ronnarong added.
A photograph of one logbook page, taken by reporters who joined the raid, showed more than US$10,000 in payments made to multiple police officers and law enforcement agencies over a 20-day period in March this year.
Ronnarong, who said the photo was legitimate, added that one section of the brothel’s account book showed 19 million baht (US$539,000) in takings, though he did not say over what period the money had been made.
The raid also uncovered multiple underage sex workers under the age of 18 inside the brothel, most of them foreign — a stark reminder of how impoverished teenage migrants continue to be lured into Thailand’s sex trade.
Ronnarong said around 90 percent of the 121 women found working in the brothel at the time of the raid were Myanmar nationals, primarily ethnic minority women from the two country’s border regions.
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