The book value of the land that Pojaman purchased was 2 billion baht.
You are 100% wrong on this one, there’s no way the book value of an empty piece of land can be at 2 billion. When the land was on sell in 2003, the entire ERAWAN group (3 buildings including office at Rathcaprasong) worth a bit above 2.5 billion there’s no way an entire corporation based in Ratchaprasong can be worth less than a piece of empty land in Ratchada. Moreover, a friend of mine was being ask to join the auction then and he showed me the detail and the land was definitely booked at 14 million (1997 value) with 850 million opening price. However the price was perceive as being too high so he didn’t join the auction same with hundreds other investors. Not until they lower the opening price to 500 million that some investors actually interesting in joining to auction.
Their bids were lower than Pojaman’s. Both of them are public companies listed on SET.
The 2 bidders are LH and Thai-Bev both listed but one is listed in Singapore. However, in my opinion Sia Jarearn actually did the bidding himself not trough Thai-Bev, but I could be wrong on this one.
Thaksin may be guilty of conflict of interest
I still believed that Thaksin wasn’t guilty of conflict of interest based on Supreme Court decision #4655/2533 and that the court is being less than independent and politicized.
Let me try to go through the details of the case again.
The book value of the land that Pojaman purchased was 2 billion baht.
The appraisal value of the land was 700 million baht.
Determining the appraisal value of land in rural areas can be almost impossible. This is not the case in urban areas, where land are bought and sold all the time.
Pojaman paid 772 million for the land.
There were 2 more bidders in the auction. Their bids were lower than Pojaman’s. Both of them are public companies listed on SET. This means that their bids must have been approved by the Board of Directors. If there are a conspiracy, the members of these boards are a part of it.
FIDF also sold 2 more plots of land during the same period adjacent to the land Pojaman purchased. Both were sold at cheaper price per sqm.
Conclusion:
Thaksin may be guilty of conflict of interest, but this is setting the bar very low. He is not guilty for facilitating a “heavily discounted” price.
In any case, why would a dollar billionaire go out of his way to manipulate both FIDF and company boards to save himself a million bucks?
If you are going to do another article on Dem dissolution case – how can they apply the current Political Parties Act to what happened before it was re-written in 2007?
The offenses might still be the but sentencing is totally different. Under current rules, for example, if one party executive is found guilty the whole board must go, no leeway, as the court explained in PPP dissolution case. Party dissolution requirements are also different, as far as I know. Misuse of electoral funds, the first case to trial, was not punishable by dissolution but it is now.
BoT and FIDF are not fully independent from the government. Prime Minister at that time had full authority to sack BOT governor, not to mention the Finance Minister, and they, in turn appoint FIDF board members with BOT governor himself as a chairman.
That’s not what the supreme court said according to ruling #4655/2533.
Beside, no country in the world that don’t separate central bank from the executive branch. Moreover, even if the government has the authority the appoint the board for the BOT or its Chairman it doesn’t mean that the BOT is dependent of the government. Let me ask you back, who select Ben Bernanke to be the Fed chairman? and if that’s the case, does the Fed considered as independent or under the US government?
Chris, I would say that under Thaksin we had “sustained, totalitarian, centrally-directed mass-mobilisation” in the form of recruiting for “Thai Love Thai” party – translation better suited for this discussion than TRT abbreviation.
Unlike Hitler or Mussolini or Suharto, Thaksin had only three-four years before the coup, it wasn’t a fully developed fascist movement yet but red shirts picked up where he had left, especially in finding enemies of the nation department, the elites, ammarts, and Bangkokians, who have no place the future “pure democracy” that reds are going to establish.
Abhisit, with all his committees, tries to address issues raised by the opposition, not his supporters, and he gets to be called fascist dictator, too!
Ralph, you seem to have missed “I agree that building “nation-religion-monarchy” unity was essentially fascist , too” sentence from my previous post. That mobilization effort was eventually directed against communists and liberals of early 70.
The article would have been a lot better with proper citations and references. An introduction and some history is provided but no means of following up is provided.
The whole thing veers towards a polemic towards the end.
A lot of terms are thrown about ( judicial activism, impartiality, anti-populist attitudes, judicial independence and conservatism) and there seems to be some nascent critique of the Thai judicial system which could be quite interesting but in the end the author fails to mention the big recent cases that go against his claim of “anti-populist attitudes” and conservatism: Map Ta Phut and PTT and also fails to mention that key controversial ruling that allowed Thaksin to become Prime Minister in the first place.
The author doesn’t touch upon criminal law as it affects ordinary people at all. The 1997 constitution guaranteed the accused certain rights and it is unclear whether these rights were ever activated in the system itself. In fact the criminal legal system including the penal system seems to be a big black hole without much media coverage or critical academic attention at all, perhaps even a taboo to talk about it.
The prosecution also supposedly has a much more narrow role than western legal systems, prosecution of cases severely limited by the often sparse evidence provided by the police.
There is also the issue of how low level disputes are resolved by the police and village headmen. For instance, the use of local guarantors in a Bangkok traffic accident accident. If a rural person cannot get anyone to vouch for them, they can end up paying a huge fraction of the damages. I have heard secondhand of these things but all of it remains very unclear and undocumented.
There is also the issue of ill-defined property rights to land which plagues the system (may be a factor of the French vs. British legal inheritance, but unclear).
In short, please documenting the basic facts and how the whole system works would be much more useful than engaging in political polemics particularly at this point in time in Thai history.
“Shameless election fraud” I was talking about was setting up fake parties and hacking the official EC database. That was all over newspapers at the time the King delivered his address to the judges.
In his speech he didn’t refer to that, however.
Two months later the court decided to annul the elections on voting booths etc, which was a charge against the EC. The fraud case against TRT took a lot longer.
BoT and FIDF are not fully independent from the government. Prime Minister at that time had full authority to sack BOT governor, not to mention the Finance Minister, and they, in turn appoint FIDF board members with BOT governor himself as a chairman.
LesAbbey (comment 31): just a point of clarification – the Democrat Party case is going to be heard in the Constitutional Court. That’s a very different animal from the regular judiciary (although somewhat less so after the 2007 Constitution). I’ll cover that in my next article. Long story short, it’s certainly not impossible to imagine the majority ruling in favor of the Democrats. After all, in 2007, the court dissolved TRT but not the Democrats, even though there were charges against the Democrats as well.
The failure of Thai education, as I see it, lies precisely in its rigidity, in its nationwide chanting of a daily paean to Bangkok.
Not only education, but all phases of Thai life suffer from this rigidity , this chanting of a daily paean to Bangkok.
Lanna, Isaan, Patani, Siam… all these regions, 22 provinces, are presently occupied by the military regime in Bangkok, need to make common cause, to throw off the yoke of subservience, to wrest the reins of government from out of the hands of the overlords in Bangkok and, federated, to govern themselves.
Why parties? Why does someone eager to represent his or her community have to be affiliated with a party?
I understand that once parties are ensconced in the political structure they are difficult to dislodge, but why are they specifically and explicitly referred to, required, in the organic laws of the state at this late date?
Why cannot ministers gather together on issues according to ideological and practical considerations independently of parties? Why should party discipline trump a representative’s mandate from the people he or she represents on any issue?
Are there any real asbestos issues for Siam Cement? This issue comes up about once a year.
Has any Thai listed company ever suffered a significant valuation impact from liabilities? I know Kamol Sukoson (or similar) did have some issues related to throwing out nuclear waste with the regular trash, but they still seem to be doing fine.
I do know that a large number of analysts cover Siam Cement (SCC) for big international banks and have never seen one mention asbestos liabilities as a serious concern.
note Shin Corp share prices went up less than the average of SET share prices
if Thaksin instead of telecommunications had bought bank shares and left his money there his wealth would have increased much more (double…)
if a PM improves the country and SET share values move up then he is guilty of policy corruption
note, Shin Satellite share values actually decreased in the period so maybe he should claim payment from the state as compensation
I wonder if the King (Queen) made any moves that improved the financial performance of CPB investments? maybe the state could claim some of his money?
I guess most other PMs are not guilty because they ran the country into the ground
Sondhi has been bankrupted 2 (3?) times so he only knows about losing money, gets insanely jealous of someone making money (except the royals and bankers are too dangerous to attack)
Most of the wealth seems to be in property, but would be interesting to know whether the SCG share price factors in the potential time bomb of asbestos related compensation claims, or is it considered at no risk because of who the shareholders are?
Yes, StanG, don’t bother with the details when they don’t suit. It seems to me that most of the definitions of Fascism you offer have more resonance with military-backed royalism of the period from the late 1960s (and continuing) than with Thaksin, TRT or the red shirts. But then you wouldn’t see that.
So if the court decides in the coming months to dissolve the Democrat Party and ban its executives, including Abhisit, for 5 years, will all those complaining about the judiciary then change their minds?
Unlikely that the court will do this? Well in an interview with Abhisit by the Nation we get this.
He acknowledged that if a party-dissolution ruling came after Democrats had registered candidacy for a new election under the current party’s banner, “it will be a massacre”.
I have said before that I have never seen the Thai judiciary so independent as they have been in recent years. I should clarify this by saying I have never seen the Thai judiciary so independent of the politicians and government. Even in non-political cases we seem to be seeing less corruption than in days past.
Now of course the judiciary should be independent of the government as its loyalty is to the State via the monarch. This is mostly the case in Western democracies, although those without a monarchy would be to the State without the royal figurehead. In this the State is above its current government and politicians.
Now does anyone really want to go back to the days where politicians can get their sons off of blatant murder charges through the courts? Some here have short memories.
On of the many problems with lèse majesté law is that the relation of dynastic succession and the huge wealth of the CPB cannot be openly discussed. As far as I know, even discussing the annual report of the CPB (if you could get a copy) would be a crime.
It is certainly a topic worth exploring in New Mandala-land.
StanG and Ralph – thank you both for an interesting discussion.
Are either of you aware of Prof. Liddle’s studies of Suharto’s Indonesia, where he argues Suharto’s New Order – while certainly corporatist – was not strictly fascist in the European sense, because it lacked the sustained, totalitarian, centrally-directed mass-mobilisation typical of Hitler especially, and Mussolini also ?
It does seem this is an important point if we’re going to call Thaksin “fascist” – in a traditional European sense – prior to the 2006 coup.
It does n’t seem to me that Thaksin was fascist in this sense, prior to the coup – though he may have been trying to get there (eg. his “democracy is only a means to an end” comment).
FDIF was independent institution (I think since 1937 if I’m not mistaken) until 2007 when the junta said otherwise. Now that the land was purchase in 2003, I hope you understand the rule of law about non-retrospective.
Dom – 19
When I said “heavy discount,” I was trying to be coy with a euphemism (hence the quotes). The comments are correct in that the crux of the matter was the conflict of interest – allegedly, the price was suspiciously below market rates because of that conflict of interest.
The land book value was 14 million, since the only way to know the current price was by comparing to the selling price of the adjacent land plot. However, from the record those land was also selling at below apprised price so when you said “heavy discount” it gave the sense of inaccuracy here because nobody know what is the price of the land. That’s why they use auction instead of selling at appraised price.
@jonfernquest Your analysis using Korea as a comparison is hallucinogenic as a benchmark and furthermore your reasoning is so politically biased that you do a great job of impaling your own argument.
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Thai Institutions: Judiciary
Christoffer Larsson – 37
The book value of the land that Pojaman purchased was 2 billion baht.
You are 100% wrong on this one, there’s no way the book value of an empty piece of land can be at 2 billion. When the land was on sell in 2003, the entire ERAWAN group (3 buildings including office at Rathcaprasong) worth a bit above 2.5 billion there’s no way an entire corporation based in Ratchaprasong can be worth less than a piece of empty land in Ratchada. Moreover, a friend of mine was being ask to join the auction then and he showed me the detail and the land was definitely booked at 14 million (1997 value) with 850 million opening price. However the price was perceive as being too high so he didn’t join the auction same with hundreds other investors. Not until they lower the opening price to 500 million that some investors actually interesting in joining to auction.
Their bids were lower than Pojaman’s. Both of them are public companies listed on SET.
The 2 bidders are LH and Thai-Bev both listed but one is listed in Singapore. However, in my opinion Sia Jarearn actually did the bidding himself not trough Thai-Bev, but I could be wrong on this one.
Thaksin may be guilty of conflict of interest
I still believed that Thaksin wasn’t guilty of conflict of interest based on Supreme Court decision #4655/2533 and that the court is being less than independent and politicized.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
@Tarrin #30
Let me try to go through the details of the case again.
The book value of the land that Pojaman purchased was 2 billion baht.
The appraisal value of the land was 700 million baht.
Determining the appraisal value of land in rural areas can be almost impossible. This is not the case in urban areas, where land are bought and sold all the time.
Pojaman paid 772 million for the land.
There were 2 more bidders in the auction. Their bids were lower than Pojaman’s. Both of them are public companies listed on SET. This means that their bids must have been approved by the Board of Directors. If there are a conspiracy, the members of these boards are a part of it.
FIDF also sold 2 more plots of land during the same period adjacent to the land Pojaman purchased. Both were sold at cheaper price per sqm.
Conclusion:
Thaksin may be guilty of conflict of interest, but this is setting the bar very low. He is not guilty for facilitating a “heavily discounted” price.
In any case, why would a dollar billionaire go out of his way to manipulate both FIDF and company boards to save himself a million bucks?
Making sense of the verdict
Hai Portman –
“Why not go the whole hog and suggest introducing a 19th century type of franchise in which useless bums with no assets are not qualified to vote?”
Isn’t this what your buddies, the “Yellow” shirts wanted? Stated very clearly in their manifesto. Correct me if I am wrong.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
Dom,
If you are going to do another article on Dem dissolution case – how can they apply the current Political Parties Act to what happened before it was re-written in 2007?
The offenses might still be the but sentencing is totally different. Under current rules, for example, if one party executive is found guilty the whole board must go, no leeway, as the court explained in PPP dissolution case. Party dissolution requirements are also different, as far as I know. Misuse of electoral funds, the first case to trial, was not punishable by dissolution but it is now.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
BoT and FIDF are not fully independent from the government. Prime Minister at that time had full authority to sack BOT governor, not to mention the Finance Minister, and they, in turn appoint FIDF board members with BOT governor himself as a chairman.
That’s not what the supreme court said according to ruling #4655/2533.
Beside, no country in the world that don’t separate central bank from the executive branch. Moreover, even if the government has the authority the appoint the board for the BOT or its Chairman it doesn’t mean that the BOT is dependent of the government. Let me ask you back, who select Ben Bernanke to be the Fed chairman? and if that’s the case, does the Fed considered as independent or under the US government?
Big questions for Thailand
Chris, I would say that under Thaksin we had “sustained, totalitarian, centrally-directed mass-mobilisation” in the form of recruiting for “Thai Love Thai” party – translation better suited for this discussion than TRT abbreviation.
Unlike Hitler or Mussolini or Suharto, Thaksin had only three-four years before the coup, it wasn’t a fully developed fascist movement yet but red shirts picked up where he had left, especially in finding enemies of the nation department, the elites, ammarts, and Bangkokians, who have no place the future “pure democracy” that reds are going to establish.
Abhisit, with all his committees, tries to address issues raised by the opposition, not his supporters, and he gets to be called fascist dictator, too!
Ralph, you seem to have missed “I agree that building “nation-religion-monarchy” unity was essentially fascist , too” sentence from my previous post. That mobilization effort was eventually directed against communists and liberals of early 70.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
The article would have been a lot better with proper citations and references. An introduction and some history is provided but no means of following up is provided.
The whole thing veers towards a polemic towards the end.
A lot of terms are thrown about ( judicial activism, impartiality, anti-populist attitudes, judicial independence and conservatism) and there seems to be some nascent critique of the Thai judicial system which could be quite interesting but in the end the author fails to mention the big recent cases that go against his claim of “anti-populist attitudes” and conservatism: Map Ta Phut and PTT and also fails to mention that key controversial ruling that allowed Thaksin to become Prime Minister in the first place.
The author doesn’t touch upon criminal law as it affects ordinary people at all. The 1997 constitution guaranteed the accused certain rights and it is unclear whether these rights were ever activated in the system itself. In fact the criminal legal system including the penal system seems to be a big black hole without much media coverage or critical academic attention at all, perhaps even a taboo to talk about it.
The prosecution also supposedly has a much more narrow role than western legal systems, prosecution of cases severely limited by the often sparse evidence provided by the police.
There is also the issue of how low level disputes are resolved by the police and village headmen. For instance, the use of local guarantors in a Bangkok traffic accident accident. If a rural person cannot get anyone to vouch for them, they can end up paying a huge fraction of the damages. I have heard secondhand of these things but all of it remains very unclear and undocumented.
There is also the issue of ill-defined property rights to land which plagues the system (may be a factor of the French vs. British legal inheritance, but unclear).
In short, please documenting the basic facts and how the whole system works would be much more useful than engaging in political polemics particularly at this point in time in Thai history.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
Christoffer Larsson #28
“Shameless election fraud” I was talking about was setting up fake parties and hacking the official EC database. That was all over newspapers at the time the King delivered his address to the judges.
In his speech he didn’t refer to that, however.
Two months later the court decided to annul the elections on voting booths etc, which was a charge against the EC. The fraud case against TRT took a lot longer.
BoT and FIDF are not fully independent from the government. Prime Minister at that time had full authority to sack BOT governor, not to mention the Finance Minister, and they, in turn appoint FIDF board members with BOT governor himself as a chairman.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
LesAbbey (comment 31): just a point of clarification – the Democrat Party case is going to be heard in the Constitutional Court. That’s a very different animal from the regular judiciary (although somewhat less so after the 2007 Constitution). I’ll cover that in my next article. Long story short, it’s certainly not impossible to imagine the majority ruling in favor of the Democrats. After all, in 2007, the court dissolved TRT but not the Democrats, even though there were charges against the Democrats as well.
From the archives: Louis E. Lomax
The failure of Thai education, as I see it, lies precisely in its rigidity, in its nationwide chanting of a daily paean to Bangkok.
Not only education, but all phases of Thai life suffer from this rigidity , this chanting of a daily paean to Bangkok.
Lanna, Isaan, Patani, Siam… all these regions, 22 provinces, are presently occupied by the military regime in Bangkok, need to make common cause, to throw off the yoke of subservience, to wrest the reins of government from out of the hands of the overlords in Bangkok and, federated, to govern themselves.
Thai Institutions: Parliament
Why parties? Why does someone eager to represent his or her community have to be affiliated with a party?
I understand that once parties are ensconced in the political structure they are difficult to dislodge, but why are they specifically and explicitly referred to, required, in the organic laws of the state at this late date?
Why cannot ministers gather together on issues according to ideological and practical considerations independently of parties? Why should party discipline trump a representative’s mandate from the people he or she represents on any issue?
Forbes on King Bhumibol’s billions
Are there any real asbestos issues for Siam Cement? This issue comes up about once a year.
Has any Thai listed company ever suffered a significant valuation impact from liabilities? I know Kamol Sukoson (or similar) did have some issues related to throwing out nuclear waste with the regular trash, but they still seem to be doing fine.
I do know that a large number of analysts cover Siam Cement (SCC) for big international banks and have never seen one mention asbestos liabilities as a serious concern.
Making sense of the verdict
policy corruption
note Shin Corp share prices went up less than the average of SET share prices
if Thaksin instead of telecommunications had bought bank shares and left his money there his wealth would have increased much more (double…)
if a PM improves the country and SET share values move up then he is guilty of policy corruption
note, Shin Satellite share values actually decreased in the period so maybe he should claim payment from the state as compensation
I wonder if the King (Queen) made any moves that improved the financial performance of CPB investments? maybe the state could claim some of his money?
I guess most other PMs are not guilty because they ran the country into the ground
Sondhi has been bankrupted 2 (3?) times so he only knows about losing money, gets insanely jealous of someone making money (except the royals and bankers are too dangerous to attack)
Forbes on King Bhumibol’s billions
Most of the wealth seems to be in property, but would be interesting to know whether the SCG share price factors in the potential time bomb of asbestos related compensation claims, or is it considered at no risk because of who the shareholders are?
Big questions for Thailand
Yes, StanG, don’t bother with the details when they don’t suit. It seems to me that most of the definitions of Fascism you offer have more resonance with military-backed royalism of the period from the late 1960s (and continuing) than with Thaksin, TRT or the red shirts. But then you wouldn’t see that.
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
So if the court decides in the coming months to dissolve the Democrat Party and ban its executives, including Abhisit, for 5 years, will all those complaining about the judiciary then change their minds?
Unlikely that the court will do this? Well in an interview with Abhisit by the Nation we get this.
He acknowledged that if a party-dissolution ruling came after Democrats had registered candidacy for a new election under the current party’s banner, “it will be a massacre”.
I have said before that I have never seen the Thai judiciary so independent as they have been in recent years. I should clarify this by saying I have never seen the Thai judiciary so independent of the politicians and government. Even in non-political cases we seem to be seeing less corruption than in days past.
Now of course the judiciary should be independent of the government as its loyalty is to the State via the monarch. This is mostly the case in Western democracies, although those without a monarchy would be to the State without the royal figurehead. In this the State is above its current government and politicians.
Now does anyone really want to go back to the days where politicians can get their sons off of blatant murder charges through the courts? Some here have short memories.
Forbes on King Bhumibol’s billions
On of the many problems with lèse majesté law is that the relation of dynastic succession and the huge wealth of the CPB cannot be openly discussed. As far as I know, even discussing the annual report of the CPB (if you could get a copy) would be a crime.
It is certainly a topic worth exploring in New Mandala-land.
Big questions for Thailand
StanG and Ralph – thank you both for an interesting discussion.
Are either of you aware of Prof. Liddle’s studies of Suharto’s Indonesia, where he argues Suharto’s New Order – while certainly corporatist – was not strictly fascist in the European sense, because it lacked the sustained, totalitarian, centrally-directed mass-mobilisation typical of Hitler especially, and Mussolini also ?
It does seem this is an important point if we’re going to call Thaksin “fascist” – in a traditional European sense – prior to the 2006 coup.
It does n’t seem to me that Thaksin was fascist in this sense, prior to the coup – though he may have been trying to get there (eg. his “democracy is only a means to an end” comment).
Thai Institutions: Judiciary
StanG – 26
FDIF was independent institution (I think since 1937 if I’m not mistaken) until 2007 when the junta said otherwise. Now that the land was purchase in 2003, I hope you understand the rule of law about non-retrospective.
Dom – 19
When I said “heavy discount,” I was trying to be coy with a euphemism (hence the quotes). The comments are correct in that the crux of the matter was the conflict of interest – allegedly, the price was suspiciously below market rates because of that conflict of interest.
The land book value was 14 million, since the only way to know the current price was by comparing to the selling price of the adjacent land plot. However, from the record those land was also selling at below apprised price so when you said “heavy discount” it gave the sense of inaccuracy here because nobody know what is the price of the land. That’s why they use auction instead of selling at appraised price.
Forbes on King Bhumibol’s billions
@jonfernquest Your analysis using Korea as a comparison is hallucinogenic as a benchmark and furthermore your reasoning is so politically biased that you do a great job of impaling your own argument.