Bangkok Metropolitan Police are investigating Vietnamese mafia operating in Bangkok, in the wake of the murder of a Vietnamese national whose body was found in a trash can last week.
The victim was found dismembered and left in a trash can in a Bang Phlat district apartment by a security guard last Wednesday. He had suffered several stab wounds and his hands and feet were tied.
Footage showed that five men had left the apartment at 5:30am that day. The security guard said they had asked to borrow the trash can from him and when he noticed them leaving in a rush he went back to check the room.
Witnesses told police that the victim was a Vietnamese man named Hoang, who they believed was a known mafioso who targeted other Vietnamese. They said that the room in which he was found belonged to a Vietnamese woman whose brother worked for Hoang.
Pol Maj Gen Thitirat Nongharnpitak, Metropolitan Police Bureau deputy commissioner, said that he believed the murder was the result of conflicts within a Vietnamese criminal gang.
Police found the woman who lived in the room, Tran Thi Nhung, at Saraburi bus terminal about to board a bus to Nakhon Phanom, where she planned on crossing into Laos.
Tran told police that her brother had been involved with Hoang’s gang, which extorts money from Vietnamese in Thailand. The gang demands protection fees and assaults those that don’t pay. Female victims of the gang were sometimes raped and men had their fingers cut off, she said.
Witnesses told police that the Vietnamese gang paid off local police THB500 per head for people they extorted.
Metropolitan Police said they were investigating to see if any local officers were benefiting from the rackets, the Bangkok Post reported.
