Thai police yesterday announced it had broken a ring of travel document forgers and uncovered what is believed to be a significant number of fake Maltese entry visas, international news agencies reported yesterday.

The fake entry visas for Malta were discovered among some 1,500 false visas for a number of countries including Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa.

The finds were made during a raid by Thai police on Sunday on the Bangkok apartments of three Thai men – aged 27, 32 and 50 – in what Thai police described as “the biggest raid on a travel document gang this year”.

Explaining that they had found no evidence that the three-man gang had relations with or provided services to any international militant networks, a police spokesperson added that the gang had no shop or market where orders were placed but instead were contacted by individuals from within an inner circle on behalf of people seeking bogus travel documents.

Thailand, particularly the urban sprawl of Bangkok, is considered a hub for travel document forgery.

In addition to the false entry visas, police also confiscated some 100 false passports and over 3,000 passport pages for countries such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Holland, France, Japan, Germany and the United States.

Some 600 fake Malaysian and Hong Kong identification cards and 100 false plane tickets were also found during Sunday’s raid.