Pakistani Taliban training Frenchmen

Pakistani intelligence officials say dozens of French Muslims have been training with the Taliban in northwest Pakistan. The officials said on Saturday they were investigating whether Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent suspected of killing seven people in southern France, had been part of this group. Merah traveled to Pakistan in 2011 and said he trained with al-Qaida in Waziristan. He was killed in a gunfight with police Thursday in the French city of Toulouse. The officials said 85 Frenchmen have been training with the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan tribal area for the past three years. Most have dual nationality with France and North African countries. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the med...

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British man, wife killed at Thai resort

 POLICE say a British man and his Thai wife have been robbed and beaten to death at a seaside resort south of Bangkok. Police Major General Wichean Tantawiriya says three Thai men - a security guard and chef at the resort and their friend - were arrested today and had confessed to killing the couple and taking a mobile phone and 5000 baht ($155). Wichean says the bodies of Michael Raymond, 68, and Suchada Bowkamdee, 52, were discovered yesterday in their bungalow at the Jack Beach Resort in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, 350km south of Bangkok. He says they had checked in a day earlier. Wichean says two of the three suspects were addicted to methamphetamine, a stimulant, and needed money to buy dru...

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Spanish tax authorities are cracking down on tax offenders

Hacienda has announced it will be keeping a close eye on fiscal engineering from e-commerce firms trading on the Internet. The Agencia Tributaría will also be keeping a close watch on sportsmen and women and artists. A new anti-fraud plan also includes alerts for contraband tobacco and the Secretary of State for Hacienda, Miguel Ferra, says they expect to recover 8.171 billion more from the measures. Hacienda has been told it cannot take on staff but it can substitute one in ten of the retirees. The number of inspections on elite sportsmen will go up by 14%, there will be greater control on house rental and undeclared businesses, using evidence of electrical consumption. Hacienda is also looking more closely at people who declare themselves insolvent when they are not, when they hide their...

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How HMRC finally caught Nasir Khan

 Nasir Khan had a successful accessories business, a jet-set lifestyle and reputation as a pillar of the community. But all that vanished in December when he was jailed for his part in a £250m VAT fraud. Jasper Jackson discovers how a 10-year investigation by HMRC led to his downfall At the start of 2001, Nasir Khan was the owner and managing director of a moderately successful accessories business called The Accessory People, which had an annual turnover of £13 million. By the end of that year, however, he was knee-deep in a £250 million VAT fraud involving the import and export of mobile phones. Khan’s journey from businessman to criminal finally ended at Southwark Crown Court fi ve days before Christmas last year,...

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Phuket 'Body Parts' Found in Expat's Luxury Mansion

 Police have found what they believe are human remains at the Phuket mansion of a wealthy Scandinavian man - and they say he may have murdered his Thai girlfriend. Thirty police raided the man's seven-bedroom 15 million-baht home in the west coast holiday destination of Kata and discovered suspicious bones in plastic bags in a basement bin. The man, who studied medicine for two years, has denied murdering his girlfriend. Aged 50, the man was being held at Chalong Police Station today on a charge of illegal possession of al firearm - a gun that was registered in the name of the missing woman. In what is one of Phuket's most sensational missing persons cases, perseverance by the family of the Thai girlfriend, who disappeared in 2009, may yet produce a remarkable conclusion. The...

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grisly secret kept by Norwegian Stein Dokset.

The Commander of Police on Phuket is to investigate why Phuket and Region 8 police ignored requests from the family of a missing woman to properly investigate her disappearance. Only this week, when officers from Bangkok's Crime Suppression Division raided a luxury villa in the beachside Phuket suburb of Kata, did police discover the grisly secret kept by Norwegian Stein Dokset. The body of his beautiful but tempestuous lover Rungnapa 'June' Ratchasombut had been decomposing in a lower-level bathroom-laundry for two-and-a-half years. When police lifted the lid of the green council trash bin that concealed the remains of Khun June, 30 at the time of her death, they also lifted the lid on Phuket police inaction. Why did officers at Kathu Police Station take no action on the family's...

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Thai police net 4 million methamphetamine pills

Thai police said they confiscated more than 4 million methamphetamine tablets Friday in northern Thailand in one of the largest such seizures in the country in recent years. The pills were seized when a pickup truck was stopped at a checkpoint early Friday morning in Chiang Rai province, which borders Myanmar, a police department statement said. The government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, which took office last August, has declared suppression of the drug trade one of its priorities. In late January, police made another major seizure of methamphetamine, confiscating 3.8 million tablets and 156 pounds (71 kilograms) of crystal meth found hidden in an empty house in Bangkok's northern outskirts. Thailand is a leading market and transit point for methamphetamine, much of which is produced...

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INDONESIAN authorities claim an Australian man arrested this week allegedly carrying 1.1kg of hashish inside his body was couriering for an international drug network.

 INDONESIAN authorities claim an Australian man arrested this week allegedly carrying 1.1kg of hashish inside his body was couriering for an international drug network. Because the amount exceeds 1kg, Edward Norman Myatt, 54, could face the death penalty if convicted of importing the drug, said I Made Wijaya, chief of Customs at Bali's Ngurah Rai international airport. "We believe he is a courier," Mr Wijaya yesterday told a press conference at which the Ballarat-born suspect was exhibited along with the drugs. "He is covering up information on the network in Indonesia." Speaking later in Denpasar, Gories Mere, chief of the national counter-narcotics agency BNN, said international drug syndicates were supplying illegal drugs into Bali. The trade had been in methamphetamines, Mr Gories...

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