BUT WILL ANYBODY LISTEN?

THE AUSTRALIAN CONNECTION 1

“It doesn’t matter that I came from Africa or am a black woman. We are all equal under God.”

A black woman from Kenya appeals in vain to the Thai and Australian governments for their help. She was trafficked to Thailand believing she had secured work in a beauty salon and spa. Instead, she was put on the streets in the Thai sex trade in Bangkok.

In video statements, below, she summarises what happened to her, and she appeals for ‘Justice. Justice. Justice.”

When Maureen Nyembura Mbugua escaped she hoped to find justice for herself and other victims.

But after giving evidence, she was deported back to Nairobi and given US$200 and the taxi fare home only to find herself abandoned, while the syndicate’s ‘Big Daddy’ Australian Douglas Shoebridge went free.

And by assisting the police, she said, she ended up in fear for her life, after Shoebridge commissioned agents to find her.

Defence Warned

Shoebridge’s ‘wife’* Tanzanian national Sara Musa Chitanda, was left to face the charges alone and was convicted and jailed for four years, reduced from eight by changing her plea to guilty,

She changed her plea abruptly after, surprisingly, a serving New Zealand police officer exposed a claim, that Maureen had withdrawn her evidence as a criminal scam.

The judge had warned the defence team of the consequences of producing fake legal documents.

“I am very scary (scared) for my life. I am speaking this to the Thai Government and Australian government.

It does not matter whether I came from Africa or am a black woman. We are all human beings before God. I need justice, justice, justice.”

A Thai police informant and an Australian police informant?

But the syndicate’s ‘Big Daddy’ Shoebridge, a ‘controlled informant’ for a Thai police unit investigating ‘foreign crime,’ was allowed to openly leave Thailand three months after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

And this enabled him to send a agent from Bangkok to Kenya to attempt to get her to withdraw her statements.

Maureen said they offered her US$10,000. She refused and told them to stop threatening her.

At the same time she was keeping the New Zealand police investigator, Detective Sgt Daniel Isherwood, who was working for the NGO LIFT International which rescued her, informed.

Det. Sgt. Isherwood was able to make an intervention at Chitanda’s trial when the defence attempted to introduce a fake statement of withdrawal of evidence from Maureen. After a warning from the judge, Chitanda quickly changed her plea to not guilty.

Maureen had named the traffickers, but why would not the Thai or Australian authorities do anything to arrest the man who got away?

(Det. Sgt Isherwood returned to New Zealand supervising CID in North Canterbury. He specialised in ASA (adult sexual assault), child protection, and organised crime.

Before he retired he gave a lecture to the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society – ‘The Forgotten Bous of Burma – Corruption and Child Abuse in Thailand.

This was a case study involving an Australian national committing sexual offences against numerous boys in Tak province near the Myanmar border, discussing the challenges involved when dealing with bribery of both the Police and Judiciary.

“I am speaking this from Kenya. I am in fear, I’m scary (scared). My life is in danger, because in 2018 I went in Thailand to work in beauty salon and/or spa. Instead, I find, I found myself trafficked with several other women in Thai sex trade. My boss, his name is Douglas (Shoebridge) and has partner Sara (Chitanda) from Tanzania. Douglas is from Australia. They are the ones that (unintelligible sounds like ‘contact me’) from Kenya to Bangkok. They paid my flight and my visa.

“Soon I got myself on streets in the sex trade. So, I got myself on the streets and in the sex trade. At the time I started to complain. They told me I had to do what they are telling me to do because I cannot go report (to) any police because this my boss from Australia, because many people in Thailand know him like big ‘Baby Daddy’.
“His wife (Sara) told me you cannot go to report us because Douglas is working and very well connected with Thai police. So that’s how I found myself in the street.”

Shoebridge, by trade a ‘marine compass adjuster’ based out of Kardinya, West Australia, had volunteered for the foreign crime unit run by a former Special Branch staff officer Lt. Colonel Dullayapt Dechapornyasin, which operated oout of a house on the outskirts of the Thai resort of Pattaya.

Shoebridge had also claimed he had assisted the secretive New South Wales Crime Commission – though, by Crime Commission rules, the very act of such an admission was a crime – and as such this would be impossible to verify.

According to a witness Steve Carpenter, an Australian ‘mate’ ** who hitched a ride with Shoebridge on his trips to Bangkok:

“Shoebridge used to visit Bagnato in the jail and said he was negotiating his release. He also told me that he had talked to the Crime Commission and told me that Cook was going to be arrested when he retured from a trip to Australia, and, sure enough, that’s what happened.” **

But he was very close fo Antonio Bagnato, an Australian crime figure now in jail in Australia for murder and to a former ‘mate’ of his in Thailand his involvement with Australian police seemed to be a matter of fact. But, then again many foreigners living in Pattaya re-invent themselves.

Shoebridge had been the prime witness against Australian Luke Cook and his Thai wife Kanyarat Wedphitak, (above) who were sentenced to death in Thailand for drugs trafficking, allegedly for Bagnato’s former partner Hells Angel Wayne Schneider

Bagnato was initially sentenced to death for kidnap, murdering, torturing, Schneider, and burying his body in a shallow grave outside Pattaya.

But he was later released and returned to Australia where in December 2024, he was convicted of the murder of Bradley Dillon by the New South Wales Supreme Court and jailed for 17 years – a successful outcome for the Australian Federal Police.

Meanmwhile Luke Cook, his Thai wife, and an American called Tyler Gerard were acquitted of drugs trafficking on appeal after the Supreme Court judge ruled that Shoebridge’s evidence ‘had no preponderance.’

Slavery Conference

Australia has been a loud voice in anti-slavery movements. It initiated the ‘Bali Process’ whereby police forces in the region – including Thailand – committed to co-operating over human trafficking issues.

Last week the Australian government sponsored its 3rd Modern Slavery Conference at the Landmark Hotel in Bangkok.

Maureen knows it well. She was put on the streets outside along city’s Sukhumvit Road.

But it is not without irony that each evening as the sun went down on the conference more trafficked African women were returning to the streets outside.

Now African women can be found in significant numbers on the streets of Patong, Phuket, and Pattaya.

I booked into the conference.

What I wanted to ask about, through Maureen’s story, was the plight of these African women, who are told they cannot go to local police for help.

While prostitution is illegal in Thailand, authorities turn a blind eye. It good for the economy.

The result is that it has become a world sex hub attracted gangs from all over bringing in women from East Africa, West Africa, the former Soviet Republics – and even East Timor.

The women are routinely arrested, given fines at the police station, paid by their handlers, and released.

Some have been deported, but there are few reports about actiomn against the syndicate bosses.

And it’s all attracting more sex tourists now made up of men wanting a larger menu to chose from.

The conference team declined the question which was in essence ‘With so much promoted cooperation betwen police international police forces, how could this happen to Maureen?”

I could detect a sense of unease.

Yet, both the Australian Federal Police and Royal Thai police were present and well placed to answer.

Lots of jet-lagged people arriving from around the world listening to statistics at great expense, but no time to help a trafficked women, whom a court had ordered to be paid over US$20,000 in compensation, which she would never receive.

Maureen had already tried Australia’s former foreign Minister for Women, Marise Payne, to no avail,

And I had put the matters also Marise Payne, Lucienne Manton, former Ambassador to Counter Modern Slavery, People Smuggling & Human Trafficking, and the Australian Federal Police on many occasions – even an ‘Investigations Manager for Human Trafficking’ – to no avail.

The AFP Media Office continuously referred the matter back to Thai Police.

But the ATIP Police Lt Col in charge of the Chitanda/Shoebridge case insisted that she informed the AFP.

As a journalist this facing this sort of stand-off is not unusual.

Meanwhile the arrest warrant for Shoebridge appeared to be going up and down from the Police National Computer like a yo-yo.

Statements questioning the reality of both countries’ commitment to co-ordinate and co-operate under the Bali Process were not heard. The conference Team Leader Lucia Pietropaoli replied:

Lucia Pietropaoli.

“First, apologies for the delay in my responses. I was considering the best way to respond to your enquiry.
“Thank you for your interest in our Modern Slavery Conference and for providing the detailed information about the case of Douglas Peter Shoebridge.
“As a program funded by the Australian Government, we are not able to handle cases ourselves or to provide advice on specific cases. We are also not privy to any case information or records held by the Australian or Thai Governments.
“I would suggest you direct your enquiry to the Australian Government or Australia’s Anti-Slavery Commissioner Chris Evans.

The Australian Anti-Slavery Commission referred me back to the Australian Federal Police.

The conference heard from the Australian police how they had stopped 18 child sex offenderS from entering Thailand, and the Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police and how women who had been tricked into cold calling fraud operations set up around Thailand’s borders were often forced into prostitution.

Not surprisingly no mention was made at the conferencxe of Anara Seitaleva, who was hired to work in a call centre in Laos by a Chinese gang, then put on the streets of Thailand as a prostitute. The 30-year-old Kyrgyzstani women jumped off a high rise in Pattaya, throwing 1000-baht notes in front of her, after her plea for help was rejected by police in Pattaya.

Our team did make contact with representatives of the Australian Federal Police and the Royal Thai Police (ATIP) Anti-Trafficking in Person Division, who brought up the Shoebridge case and at least had some knowledge. So this investigation is ongoing through further meetings.

But few people in Australia can read about Shoebridge’s activity in the legacy media today. The story was dropped on the alleged grounds that the arrest warrant for Shoebridge had been withdrawn (the bouncing yo-yo) and Maureen had withdrawn her original evidence.

Originally the Sydney Morning Herald and West Australian and MailOnline (Australia) ran long pieces on him. The story was also used in the British media, because Shoebridge also had a British passport.

But the Australian newspapers dropped the story, and worse. what made it more difficult was that they refused to show me the documentation, which, I trust, they must have had to come to their decision. i.e. a document from either Bangkok Criminal Court or Thai ATIP police, which I could challenge.

This was a first in my long career as a news hack.

I knew Maureeen had not withdrawn her evidence. Court records show an attempt had been made to produce a false affidavit by Maureen but was quickly withdrawn after the judge issued a warning about false documentation, upon protest by NZ witness who testified the affidavit was false.

Further, throughout the trial Shoebridge was described as her husband and accomplice.

********************

From the Office of the Presical Prosecutor for Human Trafficking Cases 3 (translation)

Between 3 October 2018 and 6 January 2019, Ms. Sara Musa Chitanda, together with:

• Douglas Peter Shoebridge,
• “Mary” (surname unknown), and
• two other unidentified associates,

conspired to commit human trafficking by:

• Recruiting Kenyan women with false promises of spa jobs in Thailand
• Transporting them from Kenya to Thailand
• Forcing them into prostitution
• Confiscating their earnings
• Threatening them with harm, witchcraft, and influence over Thai officials
• Detaining them and restricting their liberty

The victim was Ms. Mbugua Maureen Nyambura, Kenyan, age 32.

**********************

Further, Thai police had confirmed the warrant was valid until 2034. The February 15 2019 warrant was only taken down once. That, said Police Colonel Nalinee Chianoy, was to make additional charges and also include Shoebridge’s British passport details, which had not been included in the original warrant.

So, it looked to me like the newspapers had been given a phony document – just as the court had been given a phony affidavit. Or was somebody playing a game?

The piece which I gave to the West Australian was originally handled superbly in a very readable piece by Tony Barrass, a well-known and popular award-winning journalist, Tony even sent it to me for fact checking before publication. But the article later disappeared. Tony had left the newspaper and unfortunately died after a short illness with throat cancer. The story can still be found at the end of this article.

The West Australian never informed me of the takedown and declined a simple request to show me the complaint and any accompanying documents.

The Sydney Morning Herald also used my piece on Shoebridge after Luke Cook was acquitted on the grounds his Shoebridge’s evidence had no prepondewrance.

But, while the article remains up, but behind a paywall, all references to Shoebridge trafficking in women have now been redacted.

There were many email exchanges with the managing editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. But when it came to showing me the original complaint documentation she also refused.

MailOnline published a story which was not supplied by me but was a slightly clumsy rehash of material sent by me to other newspapers, and thus did contain some misinterpretations in the dangerous art of re-writing news copy to suit your newspaper’s style-book.

However, I assisted them anyway and the newspaper strongly contested an IPSO complaint. (IPSO: The Independent Press Standards Association).

In his evidence the complainant (Shoebridge) “accepted that there had been an arrest warrant issued against him for human trafficking, but it was inaccurate to allege that this was in relation to a “worldwide sex ring.”

“The complainant said that the prosecution witness in the case had later retracted her statement as originally provided to the court.”

The term ‘worldwide sex ring’ was the Mail’s. But the claim that the prosecution witnesss (Maureen) had withdrawn her statement was simply not true.

However, the MailOnline withdrew the story before IPSO made an ajudication. It was an easy cop out. They did not want to waste any time. And as Shoebridge agreed, they did not need to apologise for anything, There was nothing to lose. The story had been and gone anyway. The Mail had also left itself open on two inaccuracies.

But the fact remained that only way Shoebridge could contest the case was if a senior Royal Thai Police officer had made a statement to the effect that charges against him had dropped, or a court recorded the withdrawal of the warrant.

The warrant issued by Bangkok Criminal Court for Shoebridge’s arrest remains on the files of Immigration Police.

The investigation continues.

Warrant 1 – translation

Warrant 2 translation

The Bryan Flowers Connection

Footnote: Douglas Shoebridge has yet to take legal action. Today with the release of all the court files it is clear that Douglas Shoebridge was named many times, during the court proceedings of Sara Chitanda, as the boss of the trafficking group and also described in court as Chitanda’s husband – known as ‘Big Daddy’.

Together with Bryan Flowers, boss of the now dismantled Night Wish Group, who still controls some 20+ bar-brothels in the Thai resort of Pattaya, last year he made a case of harassment against the author.

Flowers’ wife, Punippa, had been sentenced to 3 years in jail for running an illegal sex business, and three employees of his ‘Flirt’ bar-brothel were jailed for 21 years for trafficking a 16-year-old girl into the Thai sex trade – including the British manager William Reece Bilton, 32, who was working without a work permit and in Thailand on an education visa.

UK Police dismissed the allegations made by Shoebridge and Flowers as mendacious ‘requiring no further action.’

** Steven Carpenter

** Steven Carpenter was a trusted friend of Shoebridge, or so he thought. He even stayed in Shoebridge’s Pattaya apartment when he was between moving from one house to another. But he became one of Shoebridge’s victims. Carpenter had run boat tours from Pattaya, with Thai sex workers on board. Shoebridge had shopped Carpenter to his boss Lt. Colonel Dullayapat, and a year after he had closed the business he was asked to do just one last tour by another Australian informant for Colonel Dullayapat’s crime unit. His arrest made headlines worldwide. Carpenter subsequently provided a statement for Luke Cook’s defence. For more go here: ‘OFFSHORE AUSSIES STITCHED ME UP AFTER SENDING THREE OTHERS TO DEATH ROW’

For more background on this case go here:
For related stories go here:

Inside the world of wanted Perth man ‘Big Daddy’ Douglas Shoebridge
Tony Barrass and Andrew Drummond
The West Australian
Saturday, 25 May 2019 11:00AM

On the other end of the phone, Douglas Shoebridge cautiously answers my questions with his. Except the “so where are you” one.
He must be somewhere in Australia, judging by the numbers dialled. He refuses to say specifically, instead asking what evidence I personally had linking him to an international sex-trafficking racket about which Thai authorities want to question him.
None, I say, but was he aware of a Thai warrant for his arrest, a copy of which was in front of me? The tone of the man named in court documents as a fly-in-fly-out worker and known to Thai authorities as “Daddy” or “Big Daddy”, switches from slow and careful to slightly irritated.

“Of course I’m aware of it,” he bites before quickly reverting to calm and adding: “All these other things are hearsay until proven otherwise.”
These “other things” read like a Quentin Tarantino creation, set in a backdrop of corrupt police, dangerous drug runners and serious, heavyweight criminals.

Perth man Luke Cook and his wife Kanyarat Wechapitak were sentenced to death in Thailand.
Shoebridge had a knack of finding himself right in the middle of it, repeatedly. He’s one of many Australian FIFO workers who have based themselves in Asia. But up there, it’s a different world to sunny, safe and well-policed Australia.
Rewind to a balmy November morning in 2015 when security guard Suphan Phithakwong heard a commotion at the up-market Pattaya residential complex it was his job to patrol.

When he investigated, he saw five men, all but one wearing silk balaclavas to hide their identities, violently kicking, punching and screaming at another man who was being shoved into the back of a white Toyota utility.
The victim, as it turned out, was Hells Angel Wayne Schneider, a boy from Blacktown in Sydney’s tough western suburbs, who had worked his way up through the ranks, specialising in the manufacturing and distribution of large-scale commercial quantities of methamphetamines.
Well-known to the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Federal Police and various State law-enforcement bodies, Schneider had skipped Australia in a hurry three years earlier after two major meth labs were uncovered in suburban Sydney. They were dripping with his DNA.
Now Schneider was in the process of being abducted, taken to a nearby house, stripped and bludgeoned to death. His body was then taken to the outskirts of town and buried in a shallow grave, just off the roadside.
Unaware at this stage they were dealing with a murder, Thai police seized CCTV footage and within a day had located the Toyota outside of a house rented to Shoebridge’s partner, Siraphat Saimat.
Her name was also on the Toyota rental paperwork.
Accessing the vehicle’s GPS, police established that once the vehicle had left the crime scene, it stopped at Saimat’s house before heading 30km out of town — where it was stationary for two hours — and then returned to Saimat’s Pattaya address.
Police then went to the out-of-town location where the vehicle had stopped, a small bush area showing signs of recent disturbances. They followed a track and it was always only going to be a matter of time before they found Wayne Schneider’s naked and battered body in a shallow grave.
Saimat told police that, on Shoebridge’s insistence, she had rented the property for another Australian, Antonio Bagnato. Bagnato had fled Australia to the seaside city in 2014 after a shooting murder in an underground carpark in Sydney’s Leichardt.

Although his cousin was ultimately convicted of the crime, Australian police still want to talk to him about it.
Bagnato, the bikie Schneider, Shoebridge and another Perth man, Luke Joshua Cook, became close associates and hung around Tony’s Gym, where they trained, and a nearby bar where they drank.
By some accounts, Bagnato became Schneider’s bodyguard, while Shoebridge continued to work for local police as a so-called “interpreter” in the special branch, colloquially known as “Catch a Foreigner Unit”.
Police believed there had been some sort of falling out between the men, and now they were hunting five suspects in Schneider’s murder. Just days after Schneider’s body was discovered, Bagnato was arrested as he tried to enter Cambodia.

He was extradited back to Thailand.
The security guard identified Bagnato as the only one not wearing a silk balaclava on the night Schneider was snatched at the compound. Thai police then charged him with Schneider’s murder and accused him of hiring thugs to abduct the high-profile bikie.
Bagnato was ultimately convicted of Schneider’s murder and sentenced to death, but has since successfully appealed, been released, been rearrested on gun charges and is now awaiting trial on arms charges in a military jail in eastern Thailand.
Shoebridge was questioned but not charged with any offence in relation to Schneider’s murder, but his evidence against Luke Cook was pivotal to a major police breakthrough.
Cook, who had received a suspended sentence after playing a role in helping Bagnato escape to the Cambodian border after Schneider’s death, was born in Duncraig.
He too had worked as a FIFO, working in the kitchen of various mine sites and at the Christmas Island Detention Centre. After meeting his wife, Kanyarat Wechapitak, online, he moved to Pattaya, bought a bar and set up a business importing boats and marine parts.
In the months before Schneider’s demise, Thai police believe Schneider gave Cook $15 million to buy 500kg of crystal methamphetamine from a Chinese drug syndicate.
The packaged ice was to be transferred from a Chinese trawler to an offshore yacht, stored in a secret location then imported into Australia at the behest and control of the Hell’s Angels.
Shoebridge told police he was on the yacht with Cook because Cook had weaved an elaborate tale about them looking for missing gold on the bottom of the ocean.
He claimed Cook, after drinking all day, had become aggressive and eventually admitted that it was hundreds of kilos of ice — and not gold — they were looking for.
Shoebridge said he became furious that he discovered he had been lied to. He felt as though he had been used because he was a good diver and could have helped Cook find what turned out to be drugs.
According to Shoebridge, Cook began to panic because he had lost a lot of people’s money and sooner or later they would be coming after him.
The half-a-tonne of ice would have netted $300 million on Australian streets. Eventually, four big packages containing 50kg each of ice were washed up on a nearby beach in Rayong Province.

Two years later, Thai authorities launched a series of raids in an attempt to crush some of the 30-plus chapters of Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs who had set up shop in Pattaya, Chang Mai, Phuket and Bangkok.
Authorities dubbed the operations “Clipping the Wings of Angels”.
As Cook and his wife were getting off a flight from Australia, police swooped. The pair was arrested and charged over the failed drug importation. Cash, properties, cars and a range of luxury assets allegedly owned by the couple were also seized.
Last November, Cook and Wechapitak were found guilty of breaking Thailand’s tough drug importation laws and sentenced to death. Shoebridge gave evidence against the couple. They in turn claimed to have been framed by the dual Australian-UK citizen.
The pair sit in a Thai jail waiting for their appeal to work its way through Thailand’s glacially slow justice system. In the meantime, they can only hope their sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
The latest warrant issued by Thai authorities for Shoebridge’s arrest surrounds allegations of human trafficking for an international sex ring allegedly operating out of Pattaya.
The warrant follows the appearance at Bangkok Criminal Court of Tanzanian national Sara Musa Chitanda on similar charges on the orders of Police Colonel Nalinee Chiewnoi, commander of Thailand’s Human Trafficking Police.
Chitanda is alleged to have gone through a marriage service with Shoebridge in Dar es Salaam last year. It was also alleged that both acted together in the trade, and escorted the mostly African women to Thailand, putting them up in rooms in the Asoke Din-Daeng area of Bangkok.
Luke Cook’s father, who lives in New Zealand said: “Am I surprised, no? Not at all. My son was labelled a Hell’s Angel and sentenced to death in Thailand without any basis at all. He was an offshore caterer and still working at it to earn money when he was arrested returning to Thailand”.
Australian authorities can do little until they are asked to act. When approached for comment, the AFP could only say it was “aware of the matter and any further inquiries should be directed to Thailand authorities”.
As for Douglas Shoebridge, he remains an enigma on the other end of the line — maybe he’s here in WA, maybe he’s not.
He is only comfortable giving the most minuscule of details and quietly talking in riddles. “You just need to allow me to digest this.”
Getting nowhere, I ask if he wants to give me a written statement which we will publish telling his side of the chaos he seems to find himself it. No, he says, ring me later, let us say 2pm, and we will talk.
I call at 2pm. The phone rings out.