Thaksin accused of buying his way to power, privilege

TNR Staff

1 year ago

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By Thai Newsroom Reporters

DE FACTO PHEU THAI BOSS Thaksin Shinawatra was today (Dec. 18) accused of buying his way to power and privilege with his money since he returned home from self-exile abroad last year.

Former leading Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt activists today submitted a joint petition to the National Anti-Corruption Commission prompting the anti-graft agency to take legal action to bring the billionaire power player to justice amidst allegations that he had covertly bought his way to power and privilege unduly granted him by certain high-level government officials.

The billionaire, de facto Pheu Thai boss/father of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra had not only allegedly flouted the country’s legal and judicial systems since he returned home from self-exile overseas but manipulated to grant himself access to illicit power and privilege to the extent that he had not had to spend a single day behind bars at Bangkok Remand prison to otherwise serve a curtailed, one-year jail sentence and instead enjoyed legal loopholes to stay for a six-month period at Police Hospital where he had allegedly staged a fake-out as a patient with the secrecy-shrouded “critical illnesses”, according to the petitioners.

The anti-Thaksin activists took to task certain high-level government officials for alleged involvement in the compromising of the rules of law to grant the de facto Pheu Thai boss the undue privileges at Police Hospital and said such acts were tantamount to power abuse and misconduct.

The petitioners singled out the accused government officials as Justice Minister Thavee Sodsong, Undersecretary for Justice Pongsawat Neelayothin, Corrections Department Director-General Sahakarn Petchnarin and Police Hospital Chief Doctor Pol. Lt.Gen. Thavisilp Vechavitharn, among others, whom, they insisted, the NACC may as well bring to justice.

Those anti-Thaksin activists included former Red Shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan, former Yellow Shirt leader/former senator Kaewsan Atibodhi and former MP/now Thai Pakdee chair Warong Dechgitvigrom, among others.

Their latest movement was made shortly after the NACC had decided to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate any abuses of power and misconducts allegedly perpetrated by those government officials who may be summoned for testimony in regard to their handling of the historic case of the billionaire Thaksin and his alleged fake-out at Police Hospital.

A fact-finding committee under the anti-graft agency had been earlier set up to collect pieces of evidence pertaining to the de facto Pheu Thai boss’s “critical illnesses” but completely failed to obtain significant medical records during his six-month stay at the hospital until he was released on parole earlier this year.

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Former Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt activists at the National Anti-Corruption Commission today, Dec. 18, 2024. Photos: Thai Rath