Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has made the correct, but long overdue, move in forming the National Committee for the Prevention and Suppression of Technology-Related Crimes.
Usually, countering cybercrime duties are scattered among government agencies and ministries. Such a silo mentality and culture may help explain why those responsible for countering cybercrime and scammers are in such a state of disarray.
The 24-member committee raises hopes that state bodies will be able to work together while being on the same page.
Chaired by Mr Anutin, this committee will bring under one umbrella the foreign affairs, digital economy, interior and justice ministries, as well as the Royal Thai Police and independent bodies such as the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO), the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), the Bank of Thailand (BoT) and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC).
It is expected to lead to closer collaboration among agencies responsible for tackling cybercrime.
The government has already started to up its game in tackling scammers. So this national committee can carry on the good momentum.
The 1411 hotline initiated by the previous Pheu Thai government serves as an example of the close collaboration between the police and commercial banks in freezing the accounts of fraudsters and mule accounts, in order to return the money to victims.
A campaign this month by the new Minister of Digital Economy and Society (DES), Chaichanok Chidchob, to better scrutinise iris-scanning activities linked to crypto trading schemes is another good example that shows the government is working to prevent the abuse of personal biometric data.
But more needs to be done. The elephant in the room is Thailand’s notorious status as a transit point for human traffickers to ship forced labourers to work at scam centres in Myanmar’s Myawaddy and boiler rooms in Cambodia.
Without the use of bribes, it would be impossible for these workers to move across the border so easily. It is an open secret that just 20,000-30,000 baht of “tea money” can make unscrupulous officials turn a blind eye to a truck taking contraband goods across the border.
Without restructuring border immigration and removing all the bad apples, Thailand will remain a “safe” transit point for traffickers. What is lacking is the political will to go after the big fish.
Early this year, Chinese Assistant Minister Liu Zhongyi visited Mae Sot, which borders Myanmar, and Myawaddy to inspect operations aiding victims of call-centre scams. And last month, a Chinese court sentenced to death 11 members of a family that ran scam centres in Myanmar’s Laukkaing, close to the Chinese border.
This week, South Korea’s Second Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jina went to Cambodia to rescue kidnapped citizens from boiler rooms. On Wednesday, the US government seized US$14 billion (458 billion baht) in bitcoin and charged Chen Zhi, the founder of a Cambodian business empire, Prince Group, with masterminding a forced-labour scam and money laundering.
So while this new committee is a good start, it will just be another paper tiger unless the government bares its teeth and flexes its muscles.