Thai prosecutors yesterday asked the Supreme Court to decide whether US$2.2 billion of frozen money belonging to ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s family could be seized by the state.
About 94 boxes of evidence arrived at the Bangkok courthouse by truck, all aiming to prove that the entrepreneur-turned-politician was “unusually rich.”
“We have come to ask the court to issue an order to confiscate this wealth,” said Sakesan Bangsomboon, director general of the special litigation division at the attorney general’s office.
The Supreme Court will now have to set up a team of judges to decide whether they will take the case. No time frame was given.
Authorities have frozen 76 billion baht (US$2.2 billion) in Thai bank accounts belonging to Thaksin and members of his family as part of corruption investigations into the tycoon, who was toppled in a 2006 coup.
Thaksin and his wife Pojaman skipped bail and fled to Britain on Aug. 11 to dodge a slate of corruption charges against them, but the cases are continuing in the couple’s absence.
The money that prosecutors are seeking to seize represents most of the profits Thaksin’s family earned when they sold his Shin Corp telecom empire in 2006 to Singapore’s state-linked investment firm Temasek Holdings.
The tax-free sale of Shin Corp sparked a public uproar, bringing tens of thousands of people into the streets in protests. The build-up of unrest eventually led to the coup against Thaksin.
He fled to Britain claiming that he could not receive a fair trial in Thailand and that he feared for his family’s safety.
Thaskin’s lawyer says he will seek political asylum in Britain, where he owns the Premier League club Manchester City.
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