Frank Cuesta arrested in Thailand for illegal possession of wild animals

BarcelonaHe youtuber and Spanish naturalist Frank Cuesta was arrested in Thailand for illegal possession of protected wild animals. This Friday the adventurer made a three-hour statement at the Lao Khwan police station in central Thailand, after being accused yesterday of having specimens of protected species in his home without authorization. The former presenter of the program Frank from the Jungle He spent Thursday night in jail and had not been able to meet with a relative or his lawyer until Friday, according to the Efe news agency. In the next few hours, the Thai prosecutor's office will decide whether to release him on bail or detain him until he appears before a court.

Cuesta was arrested at the Sanctuary of Liberty, a 16-hectare estate that he bought years ago and where he lives with dozens of animals. Hours earlier, the police had received an email notice stating that "a foreigner was in possession of protected wild animals without a permit," according to the Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Conservation. Once the police entered the house, they found ten specimens of protected wildlife - nine small-clawed otters and a duck-billed python - "without official documentation proving their acquisition."

The government agency's document states that Cuesta claims to have "bought the small-clawed otters in second-hand markets at different times." As for the python, he says that "an unidentified person" had caught him and that he "had kept it for approximately one week." The local authorities, who have seized the animals, consider that he may have committed "a crime under the law on the conservation and protection of wildlife." They defend the police action arguing that the arrest of the youtuber It is part of the government's order to "strictly suppress" trafficking, hunting, illegal breeding and trade of protected animals.

Cuesta published a video on his YouTube channel on Tuesday – the former presenter has 4.1 million followers – in which he announced that he would leave the sanctuary, without saying when, but that he would continue to maintain it from "outside Thailand". "We are involved in legal entanglements and all kinds of problems [...] There are possibilities that I will end up in prison, that I will have to leave Thailand, that I will be expelled, and there is also the possibility of reaching an agreement and that I will leave Thailand," he declared. The video was published two days ago and already has 779,000 views and hundreds of messages of support and occupies the 28th position in the trending ranking on YouTube Spain. It is also trending topic on X with 122,000 interactions. "We've been organizing everything for days in case drastic changes have to be made. I won't leave the animals alone, nor will I take them out of here, nor will I do absolutely anything," continued the presenter while walking surrounded by fauna.