The 30-million-baht lottery scandal took another turn yesterday as Pol Lt Jaroon Wimol yesterday visited Pol Col Kritsana Pattanacharoen, deputy spokesman for the Royal Thai Police, to provide more evidence to prove his ownership of disputed lottery tickets.
The retired police officer was accompanied by Atchariya Ruangrattanapong, head of a group set up to help victims in criminal cases, who told reporters yesterday that an audio tape had emerged which proved her client's case.
Mr Atchariya said the recorded phone calls between Preecha Kraikruan, the other claimant to the jackpot, and a female lottery vendor who allegedly sold him the tickets, would be a game changer in the investigation. She did not say how she came upon the recordings.
The segment of the clip most relevant to the investigation involves Mr Preecha denying to the vendor that he had won, said a source at the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), which is probing the case.
In the light of this new evidence, the CIB has vowed to focus mainly on the phone conversations and DNA evidence (which favoured Pol Lt Jaroon) rather than hearsay or witness accounts which had already proved to be unreliable.
This move strikes a contrast with the previous investigation of Provincial Police Region 7 which gave more weight to witness testimony. That probe concluded that Mr Preecha, a teacher in Kanchanaburi, was the real owner of the winning lottery tickets.
Mr Preecha lodged a police complaint against Pol Lt Jaroon, who held the winning lottery tickets, for embezzlement, resulting in the cash award being frozen pending the result of the probe.
On Monday, national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda ordered Provincial Police Region 7 to transfer the case to the CIB's Crime Suppression Division (CSD) after the regional police's investigation drew public scepticism over its conclusion.
CIB sources said Provincial Police Region 7 wrapped up the case without relying on certain key pieces of evidence previously gathered by the CSD. The two audio clips of phone calls between Mr Preecha and the lottery vendor who claimed she sold the winning lottery tickets to him form part of new evidence which the CIB will consider.
In addition, the CSD had also discredited one of the witness accounts used by Provincial Police Region 7.
According to sources, the witness told police that he had seen the numbers on the tickets as he passed past Mr Preecha at the Red City market in Kanchanaburi where Mr Preecha claimed he bought the lottery tickets.
The witness also said he also asked Mr Preecha to sell some of the tickets to him and that is why he remembered that the numbers were the winning ones. But the CSD's investigation found the witness had visited the market after Mr Preecha had left and therefore his story did not bear up to scrutiny. The probe continues.
