[ Author was Reuter / Sutin Wannabovorn ]
[ Posted on Fri, 14 Mar 1997 7:21:54 PST ]
BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuter) - Thai police said Friday they
issued arrest warrants for Saudi Arabian tycoon Adnan Khashoggi
and four other officials of the ailing Bangkok Bank of Commerce
Plc on charges of conspiring to defraud the bank.
Police Col. Prachaksin Supanpaesak told Reuters the Bank of
Thailand, the central bank, requested the warrants against the
five suspects on charges that they jointly conspired to have
Khashoggi receive $77.5 million in loans from the bank without
credible collateral in 1995.
Warrants were issued for the arrest of Bangkok Bank of
Commerce's former president, Krirkkiat Jalichandra, and former
adviser Rakesh Saxena, he said.
Krirkkiat, who is in Thailand, also faces other criminal
charges relating to his actions while with the bank, which was
taken over by the government last May.
Rakesh has been resident in Canada since mid-1996 and
Khashoggi's whereabouts were unknown.
``We are looking for Khashoggi. As for Krirkkiat he is in
town and I believe he will turn himself in. As for Rakesh, we
will coordinate with our Canadian counterparts on the arrest
warrant,'' Prachaksin said.
Police did not name the other two, who were junior officials
with the bank.
``We expect to issue arrest warrants against more suspects
related to the BBC fraud and cheating case,'' he added.
Police also said a Briton, Terry Easter, was arrested in
Bangkok on a warrant issued in July last year on charges of
conspiring to embezzle assets of the troubled bank.
Easter, 56, ran City Trading Corp., a company described by
police as a front set up to defraud the bank.
Police said Easter was also suspected of violations of the
Thai Banking Act resulting in $66.4 million in losses for the
bank. They did not elaborate.
Troubles at the bank were exposed in the middle of last year
by opposition politicians who said in the Thai parliament that
the bank was saddled with an unsustainable amount of
non-performing loans totalling more than $2.8 billion.
The revelations triggered a run on the bank's deposits and
the government later took over the bank.
the central bank said Thursday it had reached an agreement
for Industrial Finance Corp. of Thailand (IFCT) to manage the
bank.
Last week, three senior officials of the central bank,
including a deputy governor, were suspended by Prime Minister
Chavalit Yongchaiyudh for failing to follow through on other
charges against former executives of the bank.
Thai prosecutors were forced last month to drop the
government's case against the executives, including Krirkkiat,
for violations of a range of Banking Act regulations because a
one-year statute of limitations on violations of the act had
expired.
The suspended central bank officials face disciplinary
reviews.
--
Quote of 03/15/97: Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation): Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere, there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse of
another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same color"], that does not exist.
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