WMLRO.Com: who paid for the Bangkok protests?
One of the enduring mysteries of the recent protests in Bangkok was who put up the money: people lived in city centre camps for several weeks. They did not starve, they did not die of thirst, they wore new clothing in the colours of the protests and they built a cache of weapons (although the size of that cache is open to question). How?
The Thai government has been trying to find out and its Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has identified 86 individuals that it suspects provided funding.
The DSI has enlisted the help of the financial investigation specialists The Anti Money Laundering Office which has confirmed that it has identified "suspicious" transactions.
But even more interesting is the DSI's claim that thousands of millions of baht were withdrawn from accounts of members of the family of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is on the run from the Thai authorities and clearly not short of money despite a freeze on his assets. Thaksin frequently broadcast messages of encouragement to the protesters from his hideaways in, for example, the UAE with which Thailand has no extradition treaty.
On the list published by DSI are some 14 corporations, four former police or military officers and more than a dozen politicians as well as 7 members of Thaksin's family.
The DSI has found that accounts of the protest leaders were funded by deposits and the money taken out using ATMs.
Several accounts had regular large deposits and as much as 100,000 baht per day was withdrawn via ATMs. That's about GBP2,000 per day: far more than the limit that many countries allow for ATM withdrawals from a single account in a day and it is possible that new withdrawal limits will, as a result, be imposed in Thailand, a country that habitually deals in cash.
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