The Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence against former deputy commerce minister Banyin Tangpakorn for the murder of construction tycoon Chuwong Sae Tang in 2015.
The ruling announced at the Phra Khanong Criminal Court on Thursday agreed with the rulings of the Court of Appeal in August 2022 and the court of first instance in January 2021.
Banyin, 59, was convicted of conspiring to kill Chuwong, 50, and concealing the crime for his own vested interest and to evade prosecution. According to the court, the car crash in which Chuwong died was not an accident but was staged to look like one.
Banyin, a former police lieutenant-colonel and MP for Nakhon Sawan, was a deputy commerce minister in the Samak Sundaravej government in 2008. He is also serving a life sentence for the abduction and murder of the brother of a judge who presided over a case connected to Chuwong’s killing.
Banyin told police that Chuwong was a passenger in a car he was driving after they played golf and dined together in Bangkok on June 26, 2015. He claimed his car crashed into a tree, killing Chuwong, who was sitting in the front. He insisted the crash was an accident.
However, forensic evidence suggested Chuwong had been murdered, pointing to Banyin having masterminded the crime.
He was thought to have killed the businessman for a large amount of shares in the dead man’s firm. They had been illegally transferred to the former minister and placed in the possession of two women with close connections with him.
Banyin and five others were jailed in December 2020 for the abduction and murder of the brother of a senior judge, in what was an attempt to force her to drop the indictment against him in the share transfer case.
Wirachai Sakuntaprasoet, an elder brother of Bangkok South Criminal Court judge Phanida Sakuntaprasoet, was kidnapped by four men outside the court on Feb 4, 2020. The 70-year-old was later killed and his body burned and thrown into the Chao Phraya River in Nakhon Sawan.
One of the kidnappers was Banyin, who drove Wirachai from Bangkok to a forest at Khao Bai Mai in Nakhon Sawan, according to police.
The Lexus vehicle in which Chuwong Sae Tang was found dead in the front passenger seat in 2015. (Photo: Somchai Poomlard)
