Saturday, August 2, 2008

Tables turn on Thaksin

It has been a week Thaksin Shinawatra will probably want to forget. It started with the ousted Thai Prime Minister being charged, along with his entire former cabinet, with breaking gambling laws, and ended with his wife being sentenced to three years in jail for tax fraud.

In between, the Supreme Court agreed to hear charges that he arranged dodgy state loans to Myanmar's junta in order to benefit his family's telecoms empire.

But worse may be yet be in store for Thaksin, removed in a 2006 coup on the pretext of "rampant corruption", and a six-month-old coalition government elected in December but widely seen as his puppet.

More charges and graft trials against him and his inner circle are in the pipeline, and the judiciary -- if its form over the last five days is anything to go by -- is on a mission.

The contrast could not be greater than during Thaksin's time in power when the courts were reluctant to tackle Thaksin and his interests out of concern for their own skins, analysts say.

Next week, prosecutors are due to decide whether to ask the Supreme Court to seize 76 billion baht ($2.3 billion) in Thaksin bank accounts frozen by anti-graft investigators appointed by the coup leaders.

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