Thailand’s influential former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrived back in the country on Monday, his political party said, a day before a Supreme Court verdict that could potentially send the tycoon to prison.
Thaksin left Thailand unannounced on Thursday, prompting frenzied speculation he had fled into exile to avoid possible jail amid a scramble for power. On Friday, the government led by the Pheu Thai party he backs fell after it lost a vote in parliament to a rival party.
“He has already arrived,” Pheu Thai official Chayika Wongnapachant said in a text message to Reuters.
While Thaksin was in Dubai on Friday, where he spent the bulk of his 15 years in self-imposed exile to avoid jail, the Bhumjaithai party’s Anutin Charnvirakul was elected Thailand’s new prime minister after trouncing the candidate of the once dominant Pheu Thai in a parliamentary vote.
Billionaire Thaksin, who has loomed large over Thai politics for a quarter of a century, could be imprisoned if judges decide that the six months he spent at a VIP wing of a hospital in 2023 instead of jail does not count as time served.
He was in jail for only a few hours before being transferred to the hospital on medical grounds following his return to serve an eight-year sentence for conflicts of interest and abuse of power while prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
Thaksin’s sentence was commuted to a year by the king and he was released on parole in February 2024 after six months of being detained in hospital. He has since maintained a high profile as the driving force behind Pheu Thai and the former government.
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