NIELS COLOV’S RACE AGAINST TIME

Andrew Drummond | Feb 21, 2018

With his media empire collapsing about him Niels Colov, the former Copenhagen pimp, who rose to the giddy heights of a newspaper tycoon and chief of the local police foreign volunteersin Pattaya, is making one last desperate bid for survival.

With the Pattaya People Media Group unable to pay its printing bill for its newspaper and broadcast fees for its TV programmes on Sophon Cable and now running debts totaling over 13 million-baht (US$412,620.00), Papal blessed Colov is now hoping to save himself by launching a new property scam on the island of Koh Kut (aka Koh Kood).

It’s a race against time.

If it works, he believes he’ll get a lot more than the half a million or so dollars he needs, and he’s been touting the project around the healthy and wealthy.

Colov has set up a company, he says, called The Paradise Residence Koh Kut Co. Ltd. to buy beachside property on Koh Kut, to buy land and build a resort, and he predicts the revenue from sales to be US$8.3 million by selling the units on 30-year-lease to naive* foreigners.  (*my comment)

The costs of purchase of the land, and construction to completion, he estimates at US$5 million and all investors need to put up is US$3 million. And for that they get 45-50% of the company – and presumably that $8.3 million. But let’s not presume too much here.

What is Colov bringing to the table?

 “On our side we have a substantial amount of already purchased construction materials that will be our investment along with a deep know how of the island, Thai law, and Thai procedures. I have lived in Thailand for 35 years and have excellent connections and relations with high ranking Thai people, and I believe that will be of importance to the success of this project.”

Does anyone see any snag to this deal? Or is Niels simply saying, please build me a resort for my retirement, and you can have the smaller share!

He is bringing nothing to the table. Unfortunately, his contacts with high ranking Thai people have now all but been demolished.

While he once had comfortable relationships with the various Chiefs of Police and the long-term Mayor Ittiphol Khunpleum, there are new boys on the block and a new government in power.

And while the new officials may be equally or even more greedy, they have not included this Danish chancer in their plans.

Colov, recently married a massage lady and his venture into the massage business with ‘Darling Massage’ in Pattaya resulted in a police raid, Bt500,000 in fines, and a closure order, which may indicate his relationship with local police.

He also went into the construction business, borrowing cash from the Siam Commercial Bank, on the property occupied by the Pattaya People Media Group,  to set up a construction company which went bust.

If the construction materials, which Colov says he has, are those left over from his collapsed construction business he’ll probably need to explain how on earth he is going to get them to Koh Kut (Kood).

The cat is out of the bag on Thailand’s ’30-year-leases’, which property sharks have been selling with promised automatic extensions of lease up to 90 years built into the asking price. Those promises are without any legal foundation.

Nobody in their right mind, or who has conducted the right research, would buy. Too many people have been swindled in these deals on Koh Samui and other Thai paradise islands.

If  Colov has local officials involved they will be on ‘his side’ not that of his investor(s).

The beauty of the deal is that as we know Thai police, do not, as a rule, pursue cases of foreigners defrauding other foreigners. If or when this deal goes wrong and the foreigner wants his money back then he will have to join the queue. But, in any case by the time the litigation has finished Colov will have along ago attempted to brandish his papal blessing at the pearly gates.

And when the day’s work was over he could join his pals for a Tuborg in the local ‘kro’. He had made it in the underworld and soon he was producing films – the ‘artful’ stuff.

But then he had a brush with the law and found himself in jail on a series of charges from pimping to coercion (forcing some woman to do something against her own will) robbery and even vandalism.

In prison, Niels saw the light. Along with many old lags, he began travelling to Thailand, where in the pristine palm tree paradise of Pattaya he was converted to Buddhism.  And he fell in love with the hospitable and friendly locals  – and a farmer’s daughter.

His future wife was Laddawan Yingyong, a shy classical dancer at ‘Baby a Go Go’ from Ubon Ratchathani. They married; had two children and everything was going right.  And he proudly strutted around town, where he was known as ‘Mr Hamburger-Denmark’, rubbing shoulders with other Danes such as Bjarne ‘Guld’ Larsen.

He ran a chain of hamburger and (Danish polser) carts and his rivals simply disappeared and their carts fell apart, due to the succulent taste of Colov’s products.  But he himself had become a vegetarian and banished Tuborg to the bin.

So miraculous was his conversion that the good foreign citizens of Pattaya elected him chairman of the Rotary Club.

He then started a newspaper business the Pattaya People Media Group – and such was the product that advertisers found they simply had to advertise with him to flourish in the city.

And then Thai Police, recognising Niels’ leadership qualities and similar moral fibre, made him the boss of all foreign police volunteers.

In honour of his new rank, Danish celebrities, who had also been converted in Denmark’s truly groundbreaking prison rehab system,  welcomed him into their homes on his State Visits to Scandinavia and even visited him in Pattaya.

They included such figures as Lone Fristrup Jensen (above left) and Leon Owild (second from left). Lone too had made the transition from former arsonist, pimp and human and drugs trafficker,  and Leon Owild too had seen the light and now was teaching young offenders to ‘Say No!’ to drugs.

The contagion was spreading. Soon bank robbers were also seeing the light and travelling 7000 miles to Pattaya to hear from Niels’own lips sitting in the Lotus position, how they could make the full transition.

But then sadly his marriage took a turn for the worse.

Even  though she owned it and was billed as the Editor, (It’s against the Thai law for foreigners to publish newspapers or for that matter to deal in land and property in Thailand) with a heavy heart he had to cut his first Thai love Laddawan, his ’employee’, out of his newspaper business and place an announcement in his own newspaper.

Neverthess, so concerned was he with his now ‘ex-wife’s’ health that he also circulated a picture of her around town so that people could help her.

To add to his heartbreak  Niels Colov then had to put up with the antics of the Jyllands Posten, Denmark’s leading farming newspaper, which, sadly relying on police sources, accused Niels of being involved in the heroin trade, citing meetings with his friends in Copenhagen.

It was an outrageous libel and Niels rightly sued, winning a payout from the newspaper.

Things had come to a low ebb but Niels struggled on. But, never a quitter, he soon picked himself up and was riding high again.

He met American Drew Noyes ‘a lawyer, rifle marksman. skydiver, commodities and property trader and advisor to the Bank of Thailand’ who had arrived in town and set up a property business and another newspaper group – the Pattaya Times. He too had successfully estranged his first Thai wife.

After an initial spat, in which they attacked each others’ ‘cheap’ Thai girlfriends and former wives and accused each other in their respective newspapers of being fraudsters, they made up like re-united lovers. It was all a misunderstanding, after all, they had a lot in common. They both wanted to help people.

When Drew Noyes organised a legal seminar for local judges in Pattaya Niels was there to lend a hand

Through his own graft he was soon mixing with the rich and famous again. And both Colov and Niels were glowing from the excellent reviews in the local press.

They exchanged notes on how to help foreign investors in Pattaya,

buy property, marry or divorce their Thai wives and import Filipino girlfriends.

In fact, they wanted to help every foreigner get by in the family resort defending the city fiercely against ugly foreign press reports which portrayed Pattaya as a 21st century |Sodom and Gomorrah.

Soon, the two foreigners were being invited to City Hall to help Thais run their fine city.

And both were invited to the home of the local dignitary and ruler Somchai Khunpleum, aka known as Kanman Poh, who had forsaken the comfort of prison for 25 years on murder and corruption charges, making generous donations for the good of his country.

The accolades were coming in furiously, mostly published in the Pattaya Times and Pattaya People and people were able to read that Niels was waging a war on criminals in Pattaya and that Drew had secretly been 14 years service to the King of Thailand and had been appointed ‘International Adviser’ to Pattaya’s Mayor.

Together with a few police chiefs and his new found friend, Drew Noyes he was invited to be a Knight of Rizal, a highly prestigious Filipino award named after a guy called Jose Rizal.

The membership ceremony involved being blinded and walking around in circles hand on the shoulder of the next man and even though people questioned why the Mayor of Pattaya and Police Chief should also join it was a good all-round party and Niels and Drew could now rightly be addressed ‘Sir’ other than by their Filipina employees.

Honour followed honour.  Soon the United Nations wanted to honour Niels and sent an emissary from Krakow to Bangkok to bestow a rare United Nations award on him.

The UNESCO Cross award to Niels Colov, which he is seen wearing above, was for his contribution to ‘‘outstanding public, scientific, and cultural engagement for human life and education’.

The UNESCO |Cross was so rare that even the United Nations office in Bangkok had not heard of it and could not find it in their system and at the time they were rushing officials down to Pattaya to catch a glimpse.

Word spread far and wide and soon even the Pope himself wanted to honour ‘Sir Niels’ too and after being contacted by the local Diocese conferred on his own personal blessing on Pattaya’s Good Samaritan, such an honour from an infallible source.

Sadly Colov lost his friend Noyes, after Noyes was convicted and sentenced to a jail term for an extortion. Niels had predicted that Noyes would get off but may have underestimated a clear conspiracy against Noyes orchestrated by the gutter-press and a former Murdoch journalist, who was jealous of the two men’s success.

Nevertheless, after seeing Noyes pay himself out or prison and back to North Carolina, from funds raised out of public gratitude, Niels soon found himself being visited by foreign dignitaries again.

Notable amongst them was Brian Sandberg, who, taking a leaf out of Neil’s book had totally reformed from being one of the most

violent members of the Danish ‘Bandidos’ motorcycle gang to a children’s author and had come to Pattaya to thank Neils and his new wife in person.

Unfortunately. between 2015 and 2018 his newspaper business in Pattaya slumped. Unable to pay his printing bill, or pay for airtime for Pattaya People TV on Sophon Cable and unable to pay back loans to the Siam Commercial Bank, and getting his last cash blown in a failed massage parlour Niels was forced to become a ‘normal Pattaya farang’ to pay for his life in the sun.   He became a property developer.