CMPO:Assets of anti-government sponsors will be seized

BANGKOK, January 25 (TNA) - The caretaker government-run Centre for Maintaining Peace and Order (CMPO) has assigned the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO) and the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to find out financial sponsors of anti-government protests and in order to freez their assets. DSI Secretary-General Tharit Pengdit, who is also a CMPO member, told reporters on Saturday that the CMPO also resolved at its meeting earlier in the day to send negotiation teams out next Monday to peacefully ask anti-government protesters to end their blockade of government offices, especially those of the anti-government People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), to allow government offices to function normally. The negotiations will take place simultaneously next Monday at PDRC seven major rally sites in Bangkok with presence of the media, Tharit said, noting that the negotiation teams will consist of permanent secretaries of concerned ministries, chiefs of government agencies, police officers and soldiers of the Royal Thai Armed Forces. The CMPO will also issue arrest warrants against 16 PDRC leaders, Tharit said, noting that under the emergency decree imposed since January 22, 2014, arrests of PDRC leaders can be made within 30 days. The DSI chief asked people not to join protesters in disrupting advance elections on Sunday, as it is against the election laws and the emergency decree. As fears of a third-party instigation prevail during ongoing domestic political protests, police in Bangkok's suburban Pathum Thani Province, meanwhile, seized a large cache of weapons and ammunitions from a car and arrested a suspect. Deputy National Police Chief Police General Ake Angsananond announced the arrest of the 45-year-old suspected man at a checkpoint in Thanya Buri are on Friday night. Police General Ake said police found several firearms in his car, including an AK-47 rifle, 60 rounds of ammunition and two magazines, one M-61 hand grenade, one rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher and one RPG, two folding knives, one mobile phone, 22 pyramid road spikes, a camouflage cap and uniform and Bangkok car registration plates. According to the deputy national police chief, the suspect confessed that he was hired by a solider to drive the car from Pathum Thani's Lam Luk Ka District to the Rangsit-Nakhon Nayok Highway. (TNA)