More missing tourists found dead off Phuket

Three more bodies of missing passengers who were onboard a tourist boat that capsized off Phuket, Thailand, were found by Tuesday morning. The search area was expanded in an attempt to locate the last two missing passengers.

The bodies are believed to have been passengers aboard the Phoenix before the boat and another tourist boat, the Sereneta, capsized in rough seas off the southern Thai resort island of Phuket on Thursday, Phuket provincial Governor Norraphat Plodthong said during a news conference in Phuket on Tuesday.

If those three bodies are confirmed to have been passengers of the Phoenix, then the casualty list would be updated to 44 Chinese dead and, officially, three missing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.

Of the three missing, two still haven’t been found while one body is believed to be trapped under the Phoenix wreckage on the seabed and is still classified as missing. All of the dead and missing are from the Phoenix, which carried 89 passengers including 87 Chinese.

The search area also is being expanded to the neighboring provinces of Krabi, Trang and Satun and will include patrols on beaches and on scattered islands, Hua said.

Meanwhile, Tourism and Sports Permanent Secretary Pongpanu Svetarundra said that a total of up to $1.93 million would be paid to boat tragedy victims. He said $30,148 would be given in case of death and up to $15,074 for medical treatment in case of injuries.

While the search and rescue mission continues, Thai tourist police are investigating the two tour companies that own Phoenix and Sereneta on suspicion of dubious operations including tax evasion and “zero-dollar tours”, Tourist Police Division’s deputy commander, Surachate Hakparn, told the Nation, a Thai English-language newspaper.

The operators of these types of tours offer cheap tour packages and coerce tourists into buying products and services at inflated prices once they are in Thailand. The quality of such tours is often poor, they also evade taxes through shops and businesses in the same network, officials said.

There is clear evidence that at least one of the two firms involved in the recent boat tragedy is linked to zero-dollar tour operations, Surachate said.

The Sereneta belongs to Lazy Cat Travel Co. A Chinese company, Lazy Cat International, holds 49 percent of its shares. All shareholders of TC Blue Dream, which owns the

Phoenix, are Thai, but police are trying to establish if they were only nominee shareholders standing in for others. Under Thai business law, that practice is illegal, officials said.

Surachate said travel companies based in China that are alleged to have used stand-ins in Phuket to operate businesses and failed to respect safety regulations are suspected of involvement in the tragic accident.