THIS is the shocking moment a top Buddhist monk is caught having sex with his secret lover before being arrested over a £2m embezzlement plot.
Scandalous footage of Phra Wachirayan Wi, 66, smooching a woman identified as Punyavee Rungrueang, 47, in his home was widely broadcast on Thai media.
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In Thailand, Buddhist monks take a vow of celibacy and also renounce material possessions.
The CCTV clip of the pair starts with them kissing on the same chair before in graphic video they begin having sex on top of the dining table.
The footage was discovered by police during an investigation into the monk on suspicion of embezzlement.
He was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of stealing millions of pounds worth of funds, alongside the woman he was caught having sex with.
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The woman is accused of helping her lover convert and conceal the cash in an elaborate scheme.
Cops launched an investigation into Phra Wachirayan, an abbot at the Wat Phutthaisawan temple in Ayutthaya, in mid-July after receiving a tip off accusing him of misconduct.
Two streams of money linked to donation receipts issued in the temple’s name were identified.
“But the money from both streams did not enter the temple’s account”, lead police investigator Pattanasak Bupphasuwan said.
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“Not a single baht,” he added.
A raid on Phra Wachirayan’s home uncovered cash and gold bars worth 100million baht (£2.2million).
The abbot was defrocked shortly after his arrest. He has yet to comment.
Thailand‘s Buddhist institution has been plagued with reports of monks breaking their vow of celibacy, trafficking drugs and committing financial crimes.
The latest arrests come just over a year after another sex-and-blackmail case involving senior monks rocked Thailand’s monastic community.
In July last year, police opened a hotline for people to report “misbehaving monks”.
The service was launched after at least nine monks were exposed for having sex with a woman identified as Wilawan Emsawat, 36.
Wilawan then blackmailed them with photos and videos of the acts to extort a whopping nine million pounds.
The scandal was exposed when a Phra Thep Wachirapamok, a widely respected monk from his Buddhist temple in central Bangkok, abruptly renounced his monkhood and vanished.
But it soon emerged that Wachirapamok, better known as Arch, was allegedly in an illicit relationship with Emsawat, who reportedly claimed to be pregnant.
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A sweep of the woman’s house found five mobile phones with tens of thousands of files reportedly containing compromising footage of the missing monk.
Police Major General Charoonkiat Pankaew, deputy commissioner of the Cybercrime Investigation Bureau, said more than 12 Buddhist temples were under scrutiny following the scandal.