Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are sort of keeping track of this ongoing news story regarding Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn who is presently the Deputy National Police Chief. There's been a lot of talk that he is on sort of the short list if you will to become the next national police chief at the retirement of the current national police chief Mr, or I should say Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol who is apparently going to be retiring this coming September. That said, there is sort of an ongoing investigation into the dealings of "Big Joke" having to do with some kind of online gambling operation and there is an ongoing investigation into this. We have been doing a number of videos on this mostly because there is data points in it that may be useful for folks out there, especially in the expat community to gain some insight into just how investigations in Thailand work; the sort of fact-finding functions of the police when making sort of findings of fact presumably to ultimately want at some point in an adjudication, make conclusions of law.

But I was reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, thaiexaminer.com, and as per usual Thai Examiner, they drill down into the real details and I thought this was an interesting excerpt and I thought it was worth noting. So the article is titled: Big Joke's police career on the brink as Police Chief threatens to suspend the high profile top cop from job. Under the subheading within that article: New summons on Sunday came out of the blue. Quoting directly: "The serving of the new summons on Sunday came out of the blue." As we discussed in another video, he was served with another sort of summons if you go back I think it was August, September of this past year 2023, where again they showed up at his house and I think they woke keep him up actually if I recall the story correctly and he was kind of flabbergasted by it and apparently that investigation got taken up by the National Anti-Corruption Commission but now there is another investigation as to a different sort of fact pattern that now they are undertaking as well. Quoting further: "In short, the incident was quite similar to the mysterious police raid on General Surachate's home in September 2023." Quoting further: "The officers were questioned for 22 minutes. Afterwards, the two vehicles and five police officers placed the summons on General Surachate's home. However, a senior officer later accepted it had not been served." I want to come back to that. Quoting further: "The residence is located near the Police Club in the capital where the deputy chief works from."

So apparently what's going on here is there was a summons issued to "Big Joke". Now to be clear, as he and his lawyers have pointed out, and I'm making another video contemporaneously with this one where we go into that, but basically that he has only been summoned to basically give evidence in basically an inquiry format and he has not actually been subjected to an arrest warrant. This is one data point that I think is absolutely, I wouldn’t say essential, but I think it's of note for expats here in Thailand. Namely there is a difference between the police undertaking a fact-finding inquiry here and accusing someone of a given crime; basically charging someone or filing charges on someone. To be clear, there may be different duties and there may be different responsibilities and you may have different rights and privileges as a person who is under suspicion, under investigation depending on the legal posture of what kind of if you will, legal instrument you're under. What I mean to say is are you subject to an arrest warrant because a different analysis is going to be undertaken if you are under an arrest warrant as opposed to being under a summons. Now as I have discussed in many other videos I am not a Thai Attorney, I'm an American Attorney of Thai nationality so I am looking at this more or less from a Comparative Law standpoint and as an outside observer. I'm not going to go ahead and dig in or go into the high weeds with regard to really detailed analysis on the differences and your different rights and duties. Quite honestly if you have this issue and you have questions about the differences between an inquiry and a summons associated therewith as opposed to an arrest warrant, you are probably going to want to contact a legal professional because the specific facts in your given case are going to greatly drive the analysis and again having Thai legal professionals, obviously they are going to be well versed in Thai Law. The point of this video is just to provide some sort of basic educational exposition as to the fact that there is a difference between summons if you will or summoned, and being subject to an arrest warrant. So there is a difference there again going into that detail further in another video but in this video the big thing that I thought, again I want to read this again: " However a senior officer later accepted it had not been served." I am really curious to see if that little factoid there, factette if you will - I think Doug Casey out there on the ether of the YouTube calls it factettes, not factoids, whatever - that slight, what is seemingly an almost semantic fact is not semantic at all because if this was improperly served, again quoting directly: "A senior officer later accepted it had not been served." I don't know exactly what that means honestly, in terms of the ramifications because I don't know the context of how that officer was talking or what that officer was talking about specifically, but it stands to reason that if effective service was not provided, then perhaps there may be ramifications, positive, negative I don't know, neutral, but there could be ramifications for Police General Surachate himself because he may not be subject to anything if it wasn't properly served. Again I am using an outsider's perspective to provide some Comparative Law insight. Again my primary expertise comes from the Common Law tradition but under any legal proceeding, rules of civil procedure, rules of criminal procedure, generally speaking dictate that if somebody is not subjected to proper service, they may not then be subjected to the jurisdiction of a Court. Again I am talking very generally there. I am not trying to say that is the case here but that just popped out of me as somebody who has been in the legal profession for going on two decades now, the minute I saw that well “an officer later accepted it had not been served", that just jumped out of me when I was reading this. So I'll be curious to see how this further plays out and we will certainly keep people updated on this channel as the situation evolves.