Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP)/AFP/File / Handout Premchai being arrested for poaching Thai officials will test human faeces found at a campsite in a wildlife sanctuary to try to prove their case against a tycoon accused of poaching a leopard. Construction magnate Premchai Karnasuta has denied poaching charges levelled against him and three others. 
 
 They were arrested earlier this month in the sanctuary in western Thailand where rangers stumbled on their camp and found guns and animal carcasses. 
 
 Rich and influential Thais have a habit of avoiding justice. 
 
 The junta which seized power in 2014 is on the back foot over a luxury watch scandal that has engulfed the defence minister, and allegations that the ex-police chief borrowed nearly $10 million from a fugitive brothel owner. 
 
 Chaiwat Limlikitaksorn, head of a special task force with the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, said the discovery of the excrement was important because it was near the campsite and he did not believe Premchai would wander deep into the woods for such a purpose. 
 
 He said the excrement was suspiciously close to spent bullet casings and the location where the panther was skinned. 
 
 "It can prove that he was there, he cannot say he was not there," Chaiwat said, adding that the waste would be tested for Premchai's DNA. 
 
 Premchai, president of Italian-Thai Development Company which built Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport among many other major projects, denied poaching after his arrest. 
 
 He and his camping colleagues have been bailed while the case is under investigation. 
 
 The Thungyai Naresuan national park where Premchai was arrested is in tourist-friendly Kanchanaburi province. 
 
 The slain animals at the campsite were a black leopard, a Kalij pheasant and a red muntjac or barking deer -- protected species under Thai conservation law. ||||| Image copyright AFP 
 
 Twenty-one rhino horns worth an estimated $5m have been seized in Thailand after being found in luggage sent from Ethiopia in the biggest such haul in years. 
 
 The seizure comes days after 300kg of elephant ivory was also impounded in the country. 
 
 Thailand is seen as a transit point for the illegal trafficking of wildlife. 
 
 Several species of rhino are at critical risk of extinction, conservationists say. 
 
 The horns arrived at Bangkok's international airport where two Thai women who had travelled from Vietnam and Cambodia came to collect them. 
 
 According to Thai police, they ran off when the luggage was subjected to a random check. 
 
 Officials describe the incident as an elaborate smuggling effort which involved several other people inside Thailand and abroad. 
 
 Wildlife campaigners believe the rhinos were probably killed to order in southern Africa, a BBC correspondent in Bangkok says. 
 
 Activists say that despite improvements in Thailand's anti-smuggling efforts, its main airport remains a popular hub for wildlife smuggling in Asia. 
 
 Some 29,000 rhinos are left in the wild today compared to 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th Century, according to the International Rhino Foundation. 
 
 Earlier this month, poachers shot a rhino dead and hacked off its horn at a zoo in France in what is believed to be the first such incident in Europe. 
 
 Last month poachers stormed an animal orphanage in South Africa and killed two rhinos for their horns after taking staff hostage. 
 
 Rhino horns are prized in some Asian cultures as an ingredient for traditional medicines believed to be effective in treating ailments ranging from fever to cancer.
– It's not every day that a tycoon's feces are tested by the authorities, but such is the case in Thailand. Wildlife officials accuse Premchai Karnasuta—ranked by Forbes as the country's 35th richest person, with an estimated net worth of $240 million—of poaching a leopard and other animals in the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in the country's west. AFP reports rangers came up on the camp set up by Premchai, 63, and three others and found 10 carcasses of protected species, including a black leopard, a Kalij pheasant, and a red muntjac. The group was arrested Feb. 4, reports the Bangkok Post. Human excrement was found there, too, and officials say that its presence near the camp is noteworthy. They don't believe Premchai—who made his fortune in construction and heads the Italian-Thai Development Company, which erected Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport—would have strayed far from the camp when nature called. It's not the only test being conducted: Elephant tusks found in his Bangkok home will be analyzed to determine whether they came from Africa illegally. The Post reports on another potential clue: Two pellets identified via X-ray in the pheasant carcass will be tested and compared to the firearms taken from the suspects, who have denied the allegations. Premchai has a March 26 court date; wary of any potential attempt to flee, Thailand's immigration checkpoints have been told to keep watch for him. (This billionaire is involved in his own poop situation.)