The Assets Examination Committee (AEC) on Monday ordered local banks to freeze all bank accounts - worth more than Bt52 billion - belonging to Thaksin and his wife Pojaman, on the grounds that he exploited his term as prime minister to benefit his telecom conglomerate, Shin Corp, via corrupt policies.

Thaksin must have realised that the AEC has damaging evidence against him and that returning to fight the cases against him would certainly mean he would have to go to prison.

The AEC's key findings were Thaksin's "ghost accounts". The AEC found that Thaksin maintained overseas bank and brokerage accounts to facilitate his personal holdings in Shin Corp during the period leading up to the sale of Shin to Temasek Holdings of Singapore in January last year.

Based on this evidence, the AEC concluded that while Thaksin was serving as prime minister he still owned Shin Corp and introduced all kinds of policy zigzags - from revising telecom concessions and the telecom law, to lending to Burma - in order to benefit his company. The market capitalisation of Thaksin's holdings in Shin Corp rose from Bt20 billion in 2001 when he assumed office, to Bt73.3 billion last year, when he cashed out.

Thaksin has claimed all along that he transferred his whole interest in Shin Corp to his children before he became prime minister, in 2001. He produced evidence to show that he transferred his ownership of Ample Rich Investments, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, to his children Panthongtae and Pinthongta. Ample Rich Investments then held a 10-per cent stake in Shin.

But the AEC's evidence pointed the other way. Thaksin was seen to have been acting as the real beneficiary owner of Shin Corp stocks. Whenever the AEC asked Shinawatra family secretary Kanchana Honghern to show that financial transactions went through Panthongtae's and Pinthongta's accounts, she would always come up with an excuse to delay the request.

Thaksin spent much of his first year in office fighting asset-concealment charges against him in Constitution Court. Holders of public office are constitutionally required to declare their assets, but Thaksin failed to declare all of them. He was found later to have concealed a chunk of his wealth, which were put in the names of his household maids and servants. The Constitution Court let him off the hook in that case. Now his attempt to conceal assets is haunting him again.

You may wonder why the AEC has only now produced this evidence, needed to freeze Thaksin's assets, as it must have had this information for some time.

Well, the sequence is as perfect as if it had come from a movie script. First, Thaksin's name and reputation had to be destroyed, which Sonthi Limthongkul did by exposing his corruption. Second, since he would not resign and his reign would send the country further down the tube, he was removed from power by General Sonthi Boonyaratglin on September 19 of last year. Third, his Thai Rak Thai Party and regime had to be uprooted, which the Constitution Tribunal did on May 30 by handing down harsh verdicts dissolving the party and barring 111 of its executive members, including Thaksin, from politics for five years. Fourth, the wealth garnered from his abuse of public policy had to be confiscated by the state. The AEC on Monday took the first crucial step needed to freeze all of Thaksin's bank accounts. To complete the sequence, Thaksin must be put in jail. The Criminal Court would handle this if Thaksin were to return home to fight the charges against him. However, he is not stupid enough to do that.

You have to take another look at Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont. He might be inept in running the country or managing economic policy, but his strategy to deal with Thaksin has been executed perfectly. If Surayud had moved to freeze Thaksin's assets right after the coup, he would have had a fierce fight on his hands with the former leader, who still enjoyed strong support. The situation was fragile. Surayud had to move cautiously to neutralise Thaksin's cronies in the military, police force, state agencies and local communities and at the same time establish an honest - albeit uninspiring - government to educate Thai citizens, who were caught at the crossroads of right and wrong.

It has been a battle between good and evil, rather than between dictatorship and democracy, as most people have thought it to be.

At the same time, Surayud has given Thaksin enough rope to hang himself. He and his advisers understand Thaksin's mentality. Thaksin is restless and has reacted aggressively by engaging in several covert activities - with support from a law firm, a public-relations firm and the inept international media - to harm Thailand's image.

Surayud and his team have allowed Thaksin to play this cards time and again until the Thai public realised that he was only trying to serve his own interests rather than those of Thailand as a whole. So, when the Constitution Tribunal dissolved the Thai Rak Thai Party, the reaction was almost muted. When they finally moved in for the kill and froze Thaksin's assets, they succeeded in pinning him to the wall. The chance of a Thaksin comeback is now 0.00000001 per cent. He can only win this war by a grassroots revolution and that will never happen.

Thanong Khanthong

The Nation