Kim Lindegaard Nielsen, the Danish Bandidos motorcycle gang member, who was Tuesday arrested in Thailand, will for the next two weeks be kept in the custody of the special police unit that arrested him. Then he will be transferred to an ordinary prison awaiting his trial, which may take several months.
Yesterday, Danish daily BT secured an exclusive interview with Kim Lindegaard Nielsen in his cell, while the competing tabloid Ekstra Bladet meanwhile managed to arrange an interview with the main witness in the case, the Australian Erik Riemsdyk who was himself threatened out of his publishing company.
Erik Riemsdyk’s ordeal started when he established a magazine for real estate business in Samui called Samui Land & House. Shortly after, he was intimidated into becoming a Bandidos prospect member together with his partner Crispin Paton-Smith, who fully embraced the Bandidos and sought to establish a Samui Chapter of the motorcycle club.
Business soared as Crispin Paton Smith and the other Bandidos members were good at applying subtle persuasive pressure on potential clients to advertise in their magazine, for instance by mentioning that this would also buy them protection from visits by the local police.
Later the business was so good that he was asked to pay 10 percent of the income to the chapter, Erik explained. Shortly after, during a trip to Pattaya, he was then asked to transport a few kilos of heroin from one place to another to show his allegiance to the Bandidos. If he refused, he should better not try to return to Samui…
If he took the risk, he was quite sure they would most likely tip off the drug police to have him arrested and he would then loose his business anyway – plus he would be put away for life in a Thai prison. So, he said no. Since then, he has been hiding and only surfaced now to witness under the Thai witness protection program.
Meanwhile, Kim Lindegaard Nielsen claimed innocence from his cell in the special police department where he and fellow Bandidos member Crispin is kept. He pointed to the police dropping first the charge of attempted murder against him, then the money laundering charges allegedly to the tune of 450 million Danish kroner.
The only charges left against him were now only two minor charges. One for illegal assembly by establishing the Bandidos chapter, and the other for extortion, based on the only two cases, in which the police had managed to find witnesses willing to speak. One was Neil Patrick Williams accusing him for pressuring him out of his shares in the Samui Bungee Jump. The other was Erik Riemsdyk’s claims that they had pressuring him out of his publishing company.
At first the case was aimed at cracking down on spiraling illegal activities in the real estate sector on Samui, exemplified by the huge house, which Kim Lindegaard Nielsen had built on top of a mountain in Ban Por in the North of the island. The house – and another one right next to it owned by fellow Danish Bandidos member Peter Buch Rosenberg – is built on a fake land title, while actually located in a nature reserve area.
If this was indeed the case, Kim said to BT, the local bank, where he had borrowed the money to build the house, had also been cheated. They had scrutinized the papers and found nothing wrong. He himself had only brought in 3 million Danish kroner to Thailand.
