AMLO chases US$1 billion from BBC adviser Saxena
Play
Thai authorities are seeking to seize assets abroad worth US$1 billion from Indianborn Rakesh Saxena, 57, a former adviser to an executive of the failed Bangkok Bank of Commerce (BBC), who has been charged with embezzling Bt40,228 million from the bank.
The BBC fiasco has seen 19 lawsuits in ongoing court trials – while BBC executives have filed another five lawsuits against Saxena and his accomplices. Thailand had investigated and seized Saxena’s assets worth $4 million in England, and was suing in Switzerland’s Zurich Court for the seizure of Saxena’s other assets worth $1 billion, Anti Money Laundering Office (AMLO) SecretaryGeneral Seehanart Prayoonrat said yesterday.
He explained that the AMLO investigation and asset seizure in the BBC case had been suspended pending a new AMLO Transaction Committee being installed. After the new committee started working, the probe resumed its inquiry into the Bank of Thailand about suspicious account holdings in relation to the BBC case and found Saxena had almost nothing left under his name.
The committee yesterday approved a financial investigation into Saxena’s relatives and close friends, after it was reported some of these people held assets suspected of being from the BBC embezzlement.
In 1995, Saxena allegedly colluded with Krirkkiat Jalichandra, then president of the BBC, in setting up dummy loans and fabricated accounts to siphon millions from the BBC, causing its collapse under US$3 billion in debt in 1995. Fifty other financial institutions also collapsed, leading to the 1997 financial crisis.
Krirkkiat was arrested, tried and sentenced to 30 years in prison plus a fine of Bt330 million, but Saxena fled to Canada and was arrested in 1996. A Canadian Supreme Court ruling in October 2009 had him extradited to face charges in Thailand.
In related news, Seehanart yesterday said AMLO had no authority to launch an official probe into suspended Transport permanentsecretary Suphoth Sublom's financial transactions, as the unusual wealth charge wasn’t within the framework of the antimoney laundering law. He said the initial investigation by the Office of the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) had not indicted Suphoth for corruption. The charges were set only for a probe into his unusual wealth – hence this wasn’t within the antimoney laundering law and AMLO had no authority to check on his transactions in depth.
