No, Police Chief Police Gen Patcharawat Wongsuwan isn't giving out the secret on the price tag of any particular position in the National Police Force. In fact, when questioned about the allegation first hurled by the PM's right-hand man, Sirichoke Sopha, Patcharawat said: "I have not heard about such rumours in my 30 years in the police force..."

Sirichoke, a Democrat MP from Songkhla, has yet  to produce evidence to prove his point. But a columnist of Thai Post, Pakkadom, remined his readers this morning that the "price tags" for getting promoted to senior police ranks two to three years ago were somewhere between Bt300,000 to Bt10 million.

The "asking prices" vary in accordace with whether you can use that police position to make money. He said if a police officer wanted to be upgraded to the inspector's rank (without any choice of which police station to be assigned to), the under-the-table payment was Bt300,000. If you specified a particular "lucrative" police station, then the price would be doubled.

To be promoted to be the chief police officer of a "Grade A" police station, the columnist wrote, the police officer would need to offer "tea money" of up to Bt10 million.

"These are numbers I heard being bandied about two to three years ago.One would have to multiply those numbers by two for now...." he wrote.

On Patcharawat's comment that in his 30 years as a police officer, he hadn't heard about positions being bought at all, the Thai Post writer only commented:

"Perhaps he hasn't really absorbed the idealism: There is nothing under the sun that Thai police can't do..."