FACTBOX: Exiled former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra
(Reuters) - Following are facts about former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who had been living in exile in London until his visa was revoked and was in Beijing on Monday but about to move on to an undisclosed destination.
-- First elected in 2001, Thaksin was the first prime minister from the business community and the first elected Thai leader to complete a full term. He led the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party he founded in 1998 to a second landslide victory in 2005 thanks to rural voters and the poor.
-- A former policeman with a U.S. doctorate in criminal law, Thaksin became one of Thailand's richest, most powerful men by turning a small computer dealership he started in 1987 into Shin Corp, Thailand's biggest telecoms conglomerate.
-- His business thrived on government contracts and concessions, prompting accusations of corruption, but the rural masses viewed Thaksin as a mold-breaker who introduced village welfare and job creation schemes, a strategy his supporters called "Thaksinomics."
-- The sale of his family's stake in Shin Corp for a tax-free $1.9 billion to a Singapore state company in January 2006 inflamed a street campaign against Thaksin that eventually led to his overthrow in a bloodless coup in September 2006.
But he was never far from the public eye. In July 2007 he bought English Premier League team Manchester City for $164 million, pleasing soccer-mad Thais.
-- The Thai Rak Thai party was disbanded after the 2006 coup for electoral fraud and 111 of its senior members, Thaksin among them, barred from politics for five years.
Rather than fight a slew of corruption charges, Thaksin skipped bail and fled to London with his wife in August.
In October, he was sentenced to two years in jail for breaking conflict-of-interest laws in a government agency's sale of land to his wife, Potjaman. She was cleared of any wrongdoing, but in July was sentenced to three years in jail for tax fraud.
Britain revoked their visas last week, a move Thai newspapers believe was connected to the couple's convictions.
Sources: Reuters, Thaksin.net
(Editing by Darren Schuettler and Valerie Lee)
