Thailand's anti-drugs authority dropped a bit of a faux pas this week after it auctioned a car stuffed with tens of thousands of amphetamine tablets.
A buyer bought the Honda CR-V at auction this month for £14,500 (586,000 baht). Seized in a drugs case last year, it turns out that the authorities probably didn't search it quite as well as they could have.
The car was seized with £100,000 of the pills on the back seat, but that wasn't the only package onboard.
After the purchase, the new owner took the car to a garage for alterations. That's when things got interesting.
The mechanic working on the car found a gigantic hoard of amphetamine tablets — 94,000 in total.
"According to protocols, we search every vehicle we have received, and this case was no exception. However, we couldn't find anything at the time, perhaps because the pills had been well hidden," said Niyom Termsrisuk, secretary-general of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB), according to the Bangkok Post.
Mr Termsrisuk went on to reveal that the pills, known as yaba, were discovered in boxes within a secret compartment hidden behind the bumper.
Yaba tablets, a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine, are prominent in south and southeast Asia. In 2018, Bangladeshi authorities seized 53 million yaba tablets nationally. Meanwhile, police in Thailand seized 516 million meth tablets.
The total value of this illicit business is estimated to be worth upwards of $1bn a year.
Now time for the perfect segue... February is a big month for vehicle auctions here at William George.
You'll find a fantastic car and commercial vehicle auction ending 13th February.
Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately), you won't find any secret compartments stuffed full of illegal drugs in these car auctions.
That being said, the Thai authorities thought that too...
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