BANGKOK (Reuters) -Thailand’s Supreme Court will decide if billionaire former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra should serve jail time in lieu of the six months he spent in hospital detention for his conviction for conflicts of interest and abuse of power.
The following are facts about the 76-year-old tycoon who has dominated Thai politics for a quarter of a century:
EARLY LIFE AND BUSINESS
– Born in northern Thailand’s Chiang Mai province in 1949 into a fourth-generation Chinese Hakka family.
– The son of a local politician, Thaksin graduated from a police academy and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
– He studied in the U.S., earning a master’s in criminal justice from Eastern Kentucky University and a doctorate in criminal justice from Sam Houston State University.
– He ran a few failed businesses before getting his break leasing computers in the 1980s before entering the telecommunications industry with Shin Corporation, where he made his fortune, becoming one of Thailand’s richest people.
POLITICAL RISE AND FALL
– In 1994, he entered politics when he briefly served as foreign minister before becoming the founder of the Thai Rak Thai (Thai Loves Thai) party in 1998.
– Thaksin led his party to unprecedented electoral victories in 2001 and a landslide in 2005.
– Populist policies like universal healthcare and cash handouts cemented his popularity with the urban poor and rural north and northeast for many years to come.
– His business empire thrived during his premiership on state contracts, sparking public anger and protests in the capital.
– Street demonstrations, backed by conservatives, old money elites and the royalist military took aim at the untaxed sale of his family’s $1.9 billion stake in Shin Corp to a Singaporean state firm Temasek, ultimately leading to his ousting when the military seized power in 2006. A slew of graft probes were launched into his family’s “unusual wealth”.
– Thai Rak Thai was dissolved with 111 of its senior members, including Thaksin, banned from politics for five years after a court found them guilty of breaching electoral law.
– Thaksin fled Thailand in 2008 and was sentenced to jail in absentia for abuse of power involving his wife’s purchase of prime real estate. He was stripped of his police rank and assets worth $1.4 billion and his passport was cancelled.
LIFE IN EXILE
– From Britain and Dubai, Thaksin lent his support to parties created by his loyalists, which won general elections in 2008, 2011 on a populist platform.
– He continued business ventures with interests in African mining projects and real estate in Dubai and London, with his net worth reaching $1.7 billion in 2017, according to Forbes.
– In 2007, Thaksin succeeded at his third attempt to buy an English Premier League football club, taking over Manchester City for 82 million pounds ($111 million), the first step of its eventual transformation into one of the world’s most decorated clubs. After problems arose at the club, Thaksin sold City less than a year later to an Abu Dhabi consortium, its current owner.
– Thaksin from abroad would call in to rally his supporters, known as Red Shirts, who held sustained protests throughout 2009 and 2010 against a rival government including a crippling occupation of Bangkok’s business district, which was halted by a military operation that led to the death of 91 people, mostly demonstrators.
– The Red Shirts also stormed the venue of an Asian summit, forcing leaders to evacuate by helicopter.
– Thaksin’s sister Yingluck became Thailand’s first female prime minister in 2011, but met with a similar end after months of street protests that culminated in another military coup.
– Yingluck fled Thailand in 2014 and was sentenced in absentia for negligence over a rice subsidy scheme that allegedly cost Thailand billions of dollars.
RETURN TO THAILAND
– In a dramatic homecoming, Thaksin returned from exile in August 2023 on the same day his Pheu Thai party secured the premiership through a deal with parties allied with the military that had ousted two Shinawatra governments.
– He was brought to prison to serve an eight-year jail term, but on his first night in jail, he was moved to a police hospital suffering from heart trouble and chest pains.
– Thaksin’s sentence was commuted to one year by the king and after six months in hospital, he was released on parole in February 2024.
– Despite insisting he was retired, Thaksin became politically active, appearing at rallies, delivering speeches to prominent business leaders and speaking often on government policy objectives.
– Thaksin’s protege and youngest daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, became prime minister in August 2024 after a court removed predecessor and Thaksin ally Srettha Thavisin.
– Thaksin was appointed an informal adviser to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the chair of the regional bloc ASEAN, and an adviser to an Indonesian sovereign wealth fund, Danantara.
– The Shinawatra family’s fortunes took a bad turn in June 2025 after the leak of a politically sensitive phone call between Paetongtarn and Cambodia’s influential longtime former leader Hun Sen, once a close friend of Thaksin, at a time when the two countries were close to armed conflict, which erupted weeks later.
– The Constitutional Court sacked Paetongtarn for an ethics violation over the phone call. Thaksin’s allies struggled to win enough support to keep the fragile coalition together and the Pheu Thai-led government fell a week after the ruling, outmanoeuvred by a rival party.
(Compiled by Chayut Setboonsarng; Editing by Martin Petty, William Maclean)
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