Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn yet again. I've been told I am mispronouncing his first name, Surachat/Surachate, I'll try to maybe mix it up or something. I have looked online, I think I'm somewhere in the middle of the pronunciation. Transliteration of Thai names, I have got to be honest with you, I do have pronunciation problems at times with that, so apologies if I'm not getting the name perfectly correctly in terms of pronunciation. 

That being said, I sort of said "hey we were going to kind of back off on following this", I still stand by that, but that said, when there's major news on the overall topic, I think it's worth noting and an actual charge and an arrest warrant being brought is pretty major news. So I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: "Big Joke" turns himself in. By line: Embattled Deputy National Police Chief answers money laundering charge after arrest warrant issued. Quoting further and I am going to quote a couple of excerpts here. I urge those who are watching this video, go read that article in detail. As usual recently Bangkok Post is really getting in detail on this "Big Joke" thing as are other news outlets but tip of the hat to those folks for the in-depth analysis and insight. Quoting directly: "Deputy National Police Chief Surachate Hakparn turned himself into police to answer charges of money laundering, just hours after investigators obtained a warrant for his arrest on Tuesday. Pol Gen Surachate is accused in the warrant of colluding in money laundering and being a state official colluding in money laundering in violation of Sections 5, 9 and 10 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act."

So this video should act as a correction. There was a prior video we did where we were citing sources that were saying it was something akin to bribery. Now we are seeing that this charge at least is from something akin to money laundering. Again all of this remains an allegation as of the time of this video as there has not been a full adjudication as to the merits of the case, so until such time as there is, we don't know fully what the outcome of these charges will be and whether or not "Big Joke" will ultimately be found guilty. He has maintained his innocence to this point; that's noted in that article yet again. I reiterate, it would be a good idea for those who are following this to maybe go check out that article, read it in detail to get some further insight. 

As to why I make these videos, I think I have made it clear in other videos, we have been following the career of "Big Joke" ever since he took over Immigration and really started shaking things up there and then his career was just such, it was interesting to say the least, colourful and it remains colourful as you can see by the making of this video. I think it's always major news here in Thailand at least from a legal standpoint when a high-ranking member of law enforcement is charged with a crime, so I think that is noteworthy. Again it remains an allegation until we have a full adjudication, so keep that in mind. But as of the time of this video, it does look like "Big Joke", and if you get into that article further and we have also done this analysis, he was summoned multiple times but those summonses apparently went answered and apparently there was enough evidence to warrant the issuance of an arrest warrant for charges under the aforementioned Act pertaining to money laundering. So that's basically the state of play as it is right now. How this plays out remains to be seen and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.