Wood seized in Thai North

BANGKOK, May 30 (TNA) - Local soldiers and forest officials have continued searching and confiscating timbers and lumbers at suspected sites in the Thai North. In response to earlier tip offs, the soldiers from the 7th Infantry Division and forest officials from a local forest protection and fire prevention unit inspected the residence of Monthathip Kowitcharoenkul, a younger sister of exiled ex-Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, at Wiang Pink Villa housing project in the Talad Kwan locality of Chiang Mai's Doi Saket District on Friday morning, during which they found 8,000 planks of cut timbers and over 100 logs of teak and other rare wood. Apirat Noppakul, chief of the forest protection and fire prevention unit, told reporters that the caretaker of the house showed the authorities a written contract on the purchase of the logs and lumbers, indicating that the owner of the house bought the timbers from a wood shop in Chiang Mai for five million baht last year, said to be used for repairing the house. The authorities, however, seized all of the timbers for a further investigation by Forestry Department experts next week to see whether they were identical to those shown in the legal purchase document. On Thursday, local authorities also inspected and seized, for a further probe, timbers found in a plot of land next to the residence of ex-Thai prime minister Somchai Wongsawat and his wife, Yaowapa Wongsawat, who is also Thaksin's younger sister, in the Green Valley housing project in Chiang Mai's Mae Rim District. (TNA)