The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) said it will soon obtain the price lists of hundreds of supercars that were made in Italy and later sold in Thailand to assist with its probe into a series of suspected tax-dodging scams.
Italian authorities are about to send the DSI one batch of price documents, deputy DSI chief Korrawat Panprapakorn said Wednesday.
Investigators need information on the current market prices to help them examine whether they were imported legally for sale here.
The department found earlier that importers of 336 cars from Italy and 1,074 British-made cars paid unusually low taxes, based on tax records. The discrepancy was estimated at 9 billion baht.
This is part of a crackdowns into illegal luxury cars that began last year. As of November, the DSI has seized about 300 cars from showrooms across Bangkok, among other raids and measures taken since May.
The Customs Department said it plans to claim 4.2 billion baht in import duties for 250 of the seized cars.
Some may have been stolen in Britain, Pol Lt Col Korrawat said. They are still under the department's care. The allegedly stolen cars cannot be returned to their buyers because "they must be sent back to England", but other customers in Thailand can have, or have already had, the cars returned to their care, he added.
The Customs Department is keeping some of the cars at its port. This has drawn complaints from importers who have waited almost seven months already.
The department cannot release them because their import prices were suspiciously low, it said. If officials handed them over they could also be implicated, Pol Lt Col Korrawat said.
Meanwhile, the independent supercar importer association petitioned Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha Wednesday.
It expressed opposition to the Customs Department's policy of lowering the amount of expenses that can be deducted when cars are imported into the country.
Previously, customs allowed importers of European cars to deduct expenses incurred ahead of importing vehicles that amounted to 43% on average.
