Thai police pay themselves reward for bombing arrest

Clutching three thick wads of cash, Thailand’s police chief said he was handing his officers a reward of 3 million baht (€75,000) for making an arrest related to a bomb attack two weeks ago.

Somyot Poompanmoung said the money would be distributed among his men for their work in locating a 28-year-old foreigner with bomb-making materials on the outskirts of Bangkok on Saturday, who has yet to be charged.

“One million baht comes from me, the other two million baht came from my businessmen friends who do not want to be named,” he told journalists at police headquarters on Monday.

Thai police have said a bomb attack at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok, which killed 20 people and wounded 120, may have been launched by a people-smuggling gang in response to a crackdown on the trade.

On Monday authorities issued arrest warrants for two suspects, a Thai woman and a man in his 40s, after a raid on another suburban apartment block uncovered possible bomb-making materials.

In the wake of the attack Thai citizens raised a similar sum of reward money for information leading to the arrest of suspects involved in the blast, the most deadly peacetime bombing in the country. Somyot did not say whether the money he held was from the same stash.

“It is clear that it was the authorities alone,” he said. He added that the public had not provided any solid information.

The authorities have been criticised for releasing contradictory information in the days after the attack. The reward comes even as suspects are still at large and questions over the motive behind the bombing remain unanswered.

Somyot, himself a multi-millionaire, previously said the man was “taking personal revenge for his comrades” without giving further details. “It’s unlikely to be terrorism. It’s not an international terrorist act,” he added.

Police have not publicly declared whether their detainee is the same man as the prime suspect, who was captured on CCTV on the night of the bombing wearing a yellow T-shirt and dropping a black rucksack off at the scene minutes before the blast.