Thai protesters want answers on king’s wealth
SINGAPORE — The crown prince of Thailand’s third marriage unraveled in lurid headlines: The princess was stripped of her titles, her parents and brothers jailed over vague corruption allegations, her uncle purged from his senior police post.
Then the heir to the throne had to finesse a divorce settlement.
Luckily for the prince, he had access to one of the largest royal fortunes in the world, a secretive holding company laden with stakes in blue-chip Thai companies and prime land in the heart of Bangkok. The company covered the payment, reportedly close to $6 million.
Two years later, in 2016, the prince ascended to the throne. One of King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s first major acts was to transfer all the holdings in the vast company, known as the Crown Property Bureau, to his personal ownership, giving him control of more wealth than the reported riches of the Saudi king, the sultan of Brunei and the British royal family combined.
Those assets — conservatively valued at $70 billion — are now a focus of a prodemocracy movement clamoring for greater transparency into the monarchy’s finances and limits on its extensive powers.
In August, students at Thammasat University demanded the king restore the assets to Crown Property Bureau control and place it under government oversight — a startling act of defiance in a country where a strict royal insult law has traditionally silenced criticism of the monarchy.
Some protesters have also called for a boycott of Siam Commercial Bank, in which the king holds a nearly 24% stake. Fears of a run on deposits prompted a director of Thailand’s central bank to reassure investors that there was sufficient liquidity in the country’s financial institutions.
“When the protesters talk about the monarchy as an institution, the CPB is at the core,” said Pongkwan Sawasdipakdi, a lecturer at Thammasat and a doctoral candidate in international relations at USC. “One of the top things that people think about is how can the monarchy accumulate such really high wealth and we don’t really know anything about it.”
Questions over spending by an aloof monarch, who lives in Germany and whose expensive lifestyle stands in contrast to stories of his thrifty father, have emerged as Thailand’s economy reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, which followed years of tepid growth under a militaryled government closely tied to the ruling family.
Opposition politicians led by lawmaker Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit have also challenged an additional $1 billion in public funds earmarked for the monarchy in the 2020 budget — including security, travel, ceremonies and “special activities” — while the economy is projected to shrink by 8%.
Tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators have gathered in rallies since early summer, although on Wednesday, a state of emergency was declared in Bangkok and protesters who had surrounded the prime minister’s office were dispersed.
It has been a remarkable political reawakening in a country that abolished the absolute monarchy in favor of a parliamentary system in 1932 but has steadily drifted away from democratic rule.