Thailand’s whistle-blowing super-pimp
Chuwit Kamolvisit, a amboyant public gure who has cultivated an image as a loveable rogue, became widely known for his crusades against corruption. His voice may be about to fall silent. Jane Lewis reports
Chuwit Kamolvisit is a unique figure in Thailand. A selfconfessed “super-pimp” – who made a fortune from massage parlours and has had several stints in prison – he shot to national fame two decades ago as a crusader against police corruption. His campaign was so successful that he was eventually elected to Parliament on a ticket that “dogs are more honest than politicians” and was once a serious contender for the governorship of Bangkok.
“In a conflict-averse society,” with “almost no culture of whistle-blowing,” Chuwit’s sensational descriptions of official malfeasance captured the public’s attention, and he has largely held it since, says The New York Times. “When everyone’s quiet, you just whisper and everybody can hear you,” he says. Not that whispering is exactly his style. On the contrary, “he growls, loudly, and smashes things, literally”. In 2016, he was belatedly jailed for hiring “scores of heavies” to bulldoze a stretch of seedy bars in central Bangkok more than a decade earlier, notes AFP News. Other run-ins with the law have involved a questionable land deal, racketeering and allegations concerning his own financial record-keeping.
Aping Hugh Hefner
A classic “anti-hero”, Chuwit’s success is largely down to his gift of the gab, says Nikkei Asia. His tendency to pepper conversations with “witty asides” and “tongue-in-cheek” innuendos made him a popular TV talk-show host for a while. But more recently his main stage has been
“His sensational descriptions of of cial malfeasance captured the public’s attention”
the lobby of the The Davis – the upmarket hotel he owns in one of the most expensive quarters of Bangkok, where he habitually held court before TV crews and crowds of bemused tourists. Sadly, of late the lobby has fallen silent. Diagnosed with advanced liver cancer last year, he is reportedly undergoing chemotherapy at a hospital in the UK.
Now 62, Chuwit was born in Hong Kong to Thai parents, and settled in Bangkok’s Chinatown, where his father owned a department store. In his late teens, Chuwit headed to the US to study business, says The New York Times. At 21, he met and married an American woman, with whom he had two children. But he abandoned the family when his father asked him to return to Thailand. Chuwit’s stint in 1980s America was nonetheless formative, says Nikkei Asia. He came home with ambitions to emulate Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner – making “easy money… surrounded by beautiful women”.
In 1989, he launched Victoria’s Secret (cadging the name from the US lingerie chain), a string of multi-storey luxury massage parlours.
At his peak, he had around 2,000 women working for him – some, it was later claimed, underaged girls – and was using the parlours as a front for illegal prostitution. Chuwit made so much money he was able to pay local police “enormous bribes” to look the other way. It all came tumbling down in 2003 when he fell out with the force.
The wheel of fortune turns
“It wasn’t the pangs of a guilty conscience” that led Chuwit to go public with his claims of widespread official corruption, says The New York Times. “It was fury at what he saw as his own mistreatment.” No wonder detractors “roll their eyes” when he elaborates on his role as a whistleblower. “They see him as an attention-seeker” out to further “his own self-interest”. Behind the mask of the loveable rogue may lie an altogether more corrupt and cynical individual. Even after his cancer diagnosis, Chuwit continued his attempts to expose the “dirt” of others – last year going after Srettha Thavisin, a real-estate mogul with prime-ministerial ambitions. But his voice has now fallen silent, says Nikkei Asia. “After we are born, we get sick and die… the cycle of life is like that,” he said on his last interview before leaving Bangkok. Whether or not that is his last message to Thailand, only he knows.