Government denies Yingluck issued Cambodian passport
The not so veiled hand in US-NK dialogue
GOVERNMENT of ficia ls on Thursday denied claims that a Cambodian passport was issued to former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who reportedly used it to register a company i n Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong-based English language South China Morning Post ( SCMP) on Wednesday reported Hong Kong media as suggesting Yingluck may have used a Cambodian passport when fleeing Thailand in August 2017.
Senior officials in the Thai military government said Yingluck jumped bail and left the country via Cambodia, a claim Phnom Penh denies.
Yingluck used a Cambodian passport to register as the director of PT Corporation on August 24 last year, almost a year after she fled prosecution in Thailand, SCMP reported.
It cited corporate filings in the Hong Kong Companies Registry that are available for public scrutiny.
Media reports said that four months later, Yingluck became the chairwoman of Shantou International Container Terminal (SICT), a port operator based in China’s Guangdong province.
The Post’s enquiries to SICT went unanswered.
General Mao Chandara, the director-general of the Identification Department at the Ministry of Interior at the time, told The Post on Thursday that Cambodia has never issued a passport to Yingluck.
“We don’t k now whether it is fa ke or not, but we never issue passports to foreigners,” he said, before explaining t hat doing so is against Cambodian law.
He said a passport can only be issued to foreigners who have been naturalised via a Royal decree signed by King Norodom Sihamoni.
“Who in the world doesn’t know that Yingluck is a Thai national and a former Prime Minister of Thailand?
“How could she use a Cambodian passport to register a company as a Cambodian citizen? We don’t know what is happening in this story,” he said.
Khieu Sopheak, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, suggested the passport was fake, while Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said that the Ministry of Interior had searched the list of passports that have been issued and did not find Yingluck’s name.
“I received confirmation from the Ministry of Interior. It said that it checked the list [of issued passports] BY HOSTING North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a fourth time, China has signalled again that it will not be sidelined in the diplomatic dance between its Cold Warera ally and Washington.
With another nuclear summit looming between Kim and US President Donald Trump, a meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping and the North Korean leader was inevitable, analysts say.
It has become something of a ritual: Last year, Kim briefed Xi before and after his historic summits with Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
China, which wouldn’t want to be left out in the cold in any settlement, has worked to improve relations with its neighbour, which deteriorated after Beijing backed UN sanctions against North Korea.
While Beijing has been angered by Kim’s nuclear tests, it would not be happy to see its decades-old ally move closer to the US at China’s expense.
“[China] does not think their interests would be threatened by better inter-Korean relations, whereas the possibility of a North Korean alignment with the US, even potentially, against China, I think it’s Beijing’s nightmare,” said Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“I don’t think they believe it’s impossible under President Trump . . . and this is one of the drivers for Xi Jinping to keep Kim Jong-un close,” Glaser said, noting that Xi reached out “very quickly” after Kim started engaging with Moon.
China has played diplomatic wingman to North Korea, even loaning Kim an Air China jet to travel to his meeting with Trump in Singapore last year.
Beijing is intent on keeping Pyongyang within its sphere of influence – the North acts as a buffer state, keeping the 28,500 US troops in South Korea far from China’s borders.
Following their meeting in Singapore where Kim and Trump signed a vaguely worded document pledging work towards the “denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, p r o g re s s h a s s t a l l e d , wi t h Pyongyang and Washington unable to agree on what that means.
North Korea also needs to stay
and did not find [Yingluck’s] name. I reiterate that no such passport was found on t he list, he said,” he said.
Ministr y of Foreign Affairs and Internationa l Cooperation spokesman Ket Saphann did not respond to questions.
Kin Phea, t he director-genera l of t he Internationa l Relations Institute at t he Royal Academy of Cambodia, said the media reports of Yingluck’s Cambodian passport could be without basis or the passport concerned was fa ke.
Hard to believe
“First, it is hard to believe the foreign media because sometimes they report stories wit hout basis.
“I raise t he example of Asia Times, which reported that China is building a naval base i n Cambodia, i n Koh Kong prov ince. But in rea lit y, we don’t have such a base,” he said.
A second possibilit y, he said, could be t hat Yingluck obtained a Cambodian passport from outside t he officia l system.
He gave the example of an incident i n 1998 when Chinese nationa ls were found holding Cambodian passports which were not listed in the government’s system.
“So it could come out from collusion wit h [a corrupt] officia l who issued the passport for Yingluck secret ly for his personal gain,” he said.
The Thai Supreme Court sentenced t he first female prime minister in Thailand’s histor y to five years in prison for mishandling a rice subsidy scheme which reportedly cost Cambodia’s neighbour at least $ 8 bil lion.
She and her supporters say t he case was politica lly mot ivated.
Yingluck ser ved as Thai prime minister from 2011 to 2014 before being ousted from government by t he constitutiona l court.
The Shinawatra fa mily, li ke many of Thaila nd’s super-r ich, ca n t race t heir l i neage to China’s Guangdong prov ince, where t he SICT por t operator Yingluck is repor ted ly cha ir woman of, is based.
The family regularly make t rips to t heir ancestra l v i llage t here, as well as neighbouring Hong Kong, AFP reported.
Yingluck and her billionaire brother Thaksin were both elected prime minister of Thailand but were toppled in coups – Thaksin in 2006 and Yingluck in 2014.
Thaksin is wanted in Thailand over a separate corruption conv iction he a lso says was politica lly motivated.