Ranong, Fishery officials arrested three Burmese men in the middle of the sea who were smuggling over a hundred sacks of cockles. They confessed that they were hired to deliver them and did not know that it was against Thai law. Previously, officers from the Surin Island Marine Fisheries Prevention and Suppression Unit (Phang Nga) were notified that there might be illegal goods being smuggled into Thai waters. They therefore collaborated with several parties to take a boat to inspect the Ranong Canal in Ranong Province. They found a suspicious boat from the Myanmar coast entering the Ranong Canal with 3 Myanmar nationals and 150 sacks. An inspection found that all of the sacks were cockles, weighing a total of 6,750 kilograms, but there were no import documents. The 3 Myanmar nationals claimed that they were only hired to deliver the goods and did not know that it was against the Thai law because the employer on the Myanmar side said that the Thai buyer had cleared the way, but they did not know who it was. Initially, the officers charged the three with jointly smuggling aquatic animals into the Kingdom without permission and bringing a boat into the Kingdom without permission before sending them to Pak Nam Police Station to investigate who bought them on the Thai side. As for all the shellfish, they worked with the fishermen to release them back into nature. - Source: Thai News Agency
