Lao woman arrested for smuggling out Thai currency

MUKDAHAN, THAILAND, August 8 (TNA) - Thai authorities have arrested a Lao woman suspected of smuggling the Thai currency, amounting 30 million baht, out of Thailand. A combined force of Thai customs, police and soldiers apprehended the 42-year-old Lao woman, identified only as Matapon, on Friday, after stopping her pickup car at the Second Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, linking Laos' Savannakhet Province with Thailand’s northeastern Mukdahan Province, and found the seized money in a box. The Lao suspect told the Thai authorities that her employer in Laos gave the money to her to deposit in a bank for buying peptonic from Thailand, claiming that she decided to take the money back to Laos because the bank was closed. But the Thai authorities did not believe the suspect and informed her that a person could take not more than 500,000 baht out of Thailand each time. The arrested Lao woman has, thus, been detained at a police station in Mukdahan for further interrogations. (TNA)