Investigative Website Details Explosive Thaksin Allegations
Thai political kingmaker’s fortune tied to South African fixer
On August 19, a news portal called “Whale Hunting” published the first of what eventually would total seven articles – apparently with more to come – detailing the relationship of now-jailed Thai billionaire and political kingmaker Thaksin Shinawatra with an alleged onetime boiler room scam artist turned Southeast Asian fixer named Benjamin Mauerberger.
The articles are the product of “Project Brazen,” established in 2021 by former Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, 2016 Pulitzer finalists for a three-year series that exposed the US$5.6 billion 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal, called by the US Justice Department the biggest kleptocracy case in the department’s history. The Whale Hunting articles can be found here.
From their efforts a decade ago emerged the book Billion Dollar Whale, which exposed the role of Penang-born financier Low Taek Jho, known as “Jho Low,” made into a movie of the same name. Hence Whale Hunting, the name of the website now operated by Wright and Hope. Project Brazen, they say, is designed to go after “whales” – seeking to uncover what Wright said are global true stories from the world of entertainment, business, crime, and international politics via podcasts, books, documentaries, television series, and films.
With Thaksin’s help, the Project Brazen articles alleged, Mauerberger and his Cambodian partners, ranging up into the ranks around former Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, secretly took control of a major money laundering pipeline that has transformed billions in criminal proceeds from scam centers into legitimate assets. Wittingly or unwittingly, the story has even ensnared AI guru Sam Altman.
The seven articles are minutely detailed, alleging that Thaksin Shinawatra, who remained a political force in Thailand for 15 years from exile after being ousted in a military coup in 2006 “built a US$2.5-3.5 billion shadow empire through African mines, Cambodian casinos, and offshore shells – all while using convicted criminal Benjamin Mauerberger as his personal fixer for a new $60 million private jet.”
What’s more, the authors wrote, Mauerberger, a South African national with multiple passports, created a “sophisticated network of front companies that have quietly acquired massive stakes in Thailand’s state-connected energy sector. Through Singapore-based funds and mysterious Thai shell companies, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing from Cambodia’s political elite directly into the heart of Thailand’s economy.”
The seven articles name names and provide a road map for officials of the US Justice Department and the G7’s intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force, as well as governments across Southeast Asia including Singapore and Thailand, to initiate investigations into the criminal syndicates, which have defrauded millions across the world from China to the US and beyond.
But as nearly as can be determined, the revelations have raised little if any controversy, although members of the opposition People’s Party brought them up in the Thai parliament earlier this week. Politically well-informed sources in Bangkok say they have never heard of Mauerberger or Thaksin’s connections to Cambodian cybercrime organizations outlined in the articles. The newspapers of Thailand, both in English and Thai, have studiously ignored them although the allegations, some printed in the Thai language on the website, have made the rounds of social media, igniting comment. Thailand’s Securities & Exchange Commission, in the past, has failed to follow through on a criminal action against Mauerberger or against his network.
Likewise, Wright said in a phone conversation, his organization has drawn little fire from their subjects beyond a cease-and-desist letter from a crypto firm connected to Mauerbeger’s operations named KuCoin, which was recently indicted in the US for failing to implement anti-money laundering provisions.
Hunting Whales, Wright said, has no intention of retracting any of the allegations made in its stories because the authors have the documents to back them up.
“We categorically reject these demands and stand firmly by our investigation. Our reporting is based on extensive research, documented evidence, securities filings, and credible sources. We will not be silenced by intimidation tactics,” the news portal said on its site.
At this point, with Thaksin in jail, serving a year-long sentence, and with his Pheu Thai coalition having collapsed with the court-ordered ouster of his daughter Paetongtarn, it’s difficult to see anyone in power protecting him. A new coalition headed by the royalist Bhumjaithai Thai Party, which has little sympathy for the populist telecoms billionaire, has since taken over power.
However, Thaksin is said to remain close to Deputy Prime Minister Thamanat Prompow, a controversial figure also known as Manat Bophlom, who was convicted of drug trafficking after attempting to smuggle heroin into Australia in 1994. He served four years in an Australian prison before returning to Thailand to re-enter politics. He was formerly the Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives from September 2023 to September 2024 before being named deputy premier in the Bhumjaithai coalition that brought down Thaksin’s coalition.
Thamanat is said to be in the Mauerberger sphere of interests, which appear to extend well beyond the jailed former premier. As Asia Sentinel reported earlier, Mauerberger’s shadowy presence in Bangkok has earned him the sobriquet “Thailand’s Jho Low.” As Whale Hunting has pointed out, Vorapak Tanyawong on September 15 was officially named Thailand’s deputy finance minister. Vorapak is the former CEO of the Bangkok-based Krungthai Bank, one of the country’s most prominent financial institutions.
Vorapak is connected to Mauerberger’s network, the website said, through stock holdings and an advisory board position. How many other top Thai figures are connected is unknown although another is said to be Suriya Juangroongruangkit, former transport minister under Pheu Thai and uncle of reformer Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who started the Future Forward Party, the outlawed nucleus that eventually became the People’s Party. (Thanathorn’s name hasn’t come up in connection with the Whale Hunting series.)
Thaksin’s return to a certain jail term – where he is said to be overseeing sewer-cleaning crews from Bangkok’s Klong Prem Central Prison – remains a mystery, when he could have, at age 75, returned to a comfortable exile padded with a fortune reckoned in the billions, much of it from what Whale Hunting alleges is derived from illegal activity in Cambodia.
But, said a Bangkok country risk analyst, “I think it was a decision to be made between retiring from Thai politics altogether, or coming back to try to ensure the legacy lives on. I think this is him choosing the latter. It’s him saying ‘this is not the end.’”
Nor does Mauerberger seem publicly concerned by the explosive allegations contained in the articles. He has returned to Bangkok, a source in the financial community told Asia Sentinel, where he continues to drive his Ferrari around the crowded streets.
What is Southeast Asia if not a grab-bag of corrupt dirt bags and scum politicians engaged in criminalities that make Donald Trump look by comparison a saint when it comes to $$$. At least Trump is brazen enough to do his money-greed -- and that of his entire family -- out in the open and, most fantastically, right from the so-called Oval Office, which since Trump has taken over the mantle of being crooked from Richard Nixon and the Watergate affair, has become the unwashed toilet of US presidential power.
Thaksin Shinawatra is no different, and would have gone the whole hog had he not been ousted by the forever reliable politics spoiler, the Thai military brass, in 2006, when Shinawatra feld for the Middle East with his hg tail between his legs. His return saw him go back to doing what he has always done best -- be totally underhanded, filled with corrupt greed, and as if we did not know, associate himself with international criminals like Mauerberger and his like-minded thugs. Criminality isn't just skin deep in Thailand; in fact, in all of Asia, criminality -- especially kleptomania -- resides in the core of Asian politicians and their business cronies. So why should Shinawatra be any different?
Of course, if you ask Malaysia's "madani" prime minister Anwar anti-reformist Ibrahim, he'll tell you that Shinawatra is like Trump -- a saint. And a Buddhist one at that. He could see nothing wrong in Shinawatra that he even unilaterally appointed the Thai criminal as his ASEAN adviser. Fancy that! Which makes you wonder about Anwar's sense of judgment -- and morality. Like Thaksin, he would have sold it to the highest bidder. Heck, he even appointed himself as finance minister, as if the lessons of previous Malaysian finance ministers and their nefarious skills were, well, also saintly.
But back to Thailand: do any of Shinawatra's criminal antics surprise people? Or for that matter the Thai police's. Or for that matter the Thai military. And for that matter just how pissy weak is the Thai constitution when it allows crooks and criminals like Thaksin Shinawatra to be kingmaker and let his daughters run the show? To where? Mayhem. It's so boondoggle that the people have been rendered voiceless and powerless to stop Asia's political cretins from their kleptomania tendencies while flushing their respective countries down the toilet bowl.