Thailand plans to freeze more of ousted PM's assets
Thai officials have traced an additional €458m in assets of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and will freeze them as they investigate his alleged corruption, a government official said today.
Thaksin, currently negotiating to buy Premier League football club Manchester City, was toppled by a bloodless coup last September, and has been targeted by several investigations into alleged corruption and abuse of power.
Last week, the Assets Examination Committee froze 52.88 billion baht (€1.1bn) of Thaksin’s money, believed to be proceeds from the sale of his telecommunications company Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings, a Singapore government investment company in January 2006.
But the government said 20 billion baht (€458m) was missing from the 74.3 billion baht sale.
“The AEC tracked the money trail and found that more than 20 billion baht was shifted to the accounts of companies instead of to individual accounts. AEC is set to freeze those accounts,” Auditor General and AEC member Jaruvan Maintaka told reporters.
The AEC has frozen Thaksin’s assets pending his trial on charges of corruption and abuse of power.
Yesterday police ordered Thaksin to return to Thailand to face charges that he concealed his ownership of millions of pounds worth of shares from the Thai stock exchange.
The charges are unrelated to the Shin Corp sale.
