A German tourist who claimed to have paid a one-million-baht bribe to police in Pattaya to secure his release from detention in 2022 for soliciting an underage prostitute has issued a letter stating that the information he gave was misleading, deputy national police chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn said yesterday.
In the letter, the man also apologised to the Thai police, Pol Gen Surachate said.
The senior Thai officer met with police and prosecutors in Germany on Wednesday to discuss the bribery claim made against the Thai police by a German national, given the damage it has caused to the reputation of Thailand's judiciary and its procedures for handling human trafficking and child sexual abuse cases, he said.
The investigation comes after a news documentary called Sex Tourists in Thailand was posted on the Deutsche Welle (DW) Documentary YouTube Channel last December. Access to the documentary is now blocked in Thailand.
One part of the video cited a case of paedophilia involving a German national, Jens Kirch, 55. The man was arrested after a police raid on a nightclub in Pattaya called Cobra Beer Bar on Sept 11, 2022.
In the documentary, Kirch admitted to having sex with a minor aged 14 years old whom he took to his hotel room from the bar.
The man said he paid about 700,000 baht for bail and legal fees and another one million baht in cash to officials before flying home to Frankfurt seven days after being charged.
The German suspect was able to leave the country because there was no condition imposed with his bail. He is now imprisoned in Germany.
Pol Gen Surachate said a German prosecutor told him that Kirch had told German officers during an interrogation that he did not know the person he slept with was under 18.
Kirch reportedly asked the Thai court to let him fly to Germany due to a heart condition and concern about his business, but he failed to turn up at the Thai court hearing due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he claimed.
In Kirch's letter, which was subsequently translated into Thai, the man insisted he never paid such a bribe to Thai authorities. He stated that he only paid for his bail.
The man wrote that the journalist who questioned him had deliberately presented the information in a misleading way in a bid to attract more viewers to the YouTube channel. Kirch said the journalist's actions had insulted both himself and Thailand.
Kirch insisted that Thai authorities worked professionally and apologised for giving an interview with an unethical journalist who had tried to sully the reputation of Thailand, Pol Gen Surachate said.
