More than 95 per cent of the money-laundering cases in Thailand filed with courts in 2003 involved drug trafficking, according to a senior official at the Attorney General's Office.

Surasak Trirattrakul, the special public prosecutor for money laundering cases in Thailand, said the Thai Anti-money Laundering Office (AMLO) had submitted over 100 cases to state attorneys for further court action between January 1 and December 31, 2003.

State attorneys, meanwhile, approved 108 cases and forwarded them to the court during the same period.

In these cases, 95 per cent of the suspects were drug traffickers arrested by Thailand's authorities in the war against drugs, a period in which the number of money-laundering cases shot up dramatically compared to the same period a year earlier.

The average amount of assets confiscated by authorities was Bt7 million to Bt10 million per case.

Most of the suspects had transferred assets to other people or turned the money earned from drugs into land, vehicles, stocks or insurance policies. Surasak said that some suspects had transferred money from Thailand to foreign bank accounts.

Because of closer cooperation between state attorneys and the AMLO, nearly all cases forwarded by the agency ended up in court for a verdict by the Attorney General's Office, once facts were verified.