HONG KONG -- His pictures beamed across the nation's television stations and front pages of all of its newspapers from down market tabloids to sober-sided broadsheets: the grin on his face was as wide as a melon and he held, fanlike, a huge wad of currency notes for all the world, like a television game show host holding the latest jackpot, or a central bank official showing off the latest issue of freshly designed notes.
He was neither or these. Indeed, his thin pencil mustache and slicked hair gave an indication of his real claim to fame. Physically, he looked to have stepped from central casting as the chief baddie in a gangster film -- close enough to the mark because Chuwit Kamolvisit, the star of the pictures, is Thailand's biggest baron of sex and porn.
Yet with his revelations, some of the opinions have changed, if not from revulsion to reverence, then to a sneaking admiration for Chuwit's daring and sheer guts. He claimed the money was a small sample of the vast sums that he had paid to the police in bribes to keep his massage parlors in business, in all about $60 million, expended at 12 million baht ($300,000) a month.