'Paper' companies set up to conceal assets : DSI chief

Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra and his ex-wife set up layers of "paper" companies to hide the true ownership of their assets, Sunai Manomai-udom, the former head of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) told the Supreme Court yesterday.

Sunai was one of the prosecution witnesses in the Bt76-billion asset seizure case in which Thaksin is accused of hiding his assets while in office and abusing his authority to boost the value of those assets.

After SC Assets Plc was founded in 1994, Thaksin and wife Pojaman set up a several "paper" companies such as Win Mark Co, Blue Diamond Co, and Sinatra Co to conceal their holdings in SC Assets.

Sunai said there were certified documents from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia to support the conclusion that all these firms were nominees of Thaksin and Pojaman while the former held public office from 2001 to 2006.

Meanwhile, Wibul Sithaporn, a former assistant president of the state-owned Export-Import Bank, told the court the bank provided a Bt4-billion loan to the government of Myanmar during the tenure of Thaksin's government.

The low-interest loan included a Bt670-million Thai government subsidy on the interest charge.

However, about Bt1 billion of the Exim Bank loan was used by Myanmar to buy satellite services from Shin Satellite, a unit of Shin Corp, then controlled by Thaksin and Pojaman.

In addition, Netima Euthammapimuk, a former director of Total Access Communications (TAC), and Thana Thien-achariya, another senior TAC executive, testified before the court that AIS, a unit of Shin Corp, held an advantage over TAC because the former did not have to pay the access charge of Bt200 per number for its post-paid service.

This resulted in unfair competition in the highly-lucrative mobile phone business.

Prosecutors said Thaksin abused his authority as the concession contract between AIS and the state-owned TOT was amended to benefit AIS while he was prime minister.

Besides the access charge issue, the concession fee was reduced from 25 per cent to 20 per cent, resulting in a major revenue loss for state-owned TOT, prosecutors said.

The Supreme Court is due to hear more prosecution witnesses until the middle of next month, after which it will give a ruling on whether Thaksin and his former wife's Bt76 billion in assets will be seized.