The World’s Richest King, His Mysterious Fortune, and Thailand’s Protesters Who Want Answers
The crown prince of Thailand’s third marriage unraveled in lurid headlines: The princess was stripped of her titles, her parents and brothers jailed over vague corruption allegations, her uncle purged from his senior police post.
Then the heir to the throne had to finesse a divorce settlement.
Luckily for the prince, he had access to one of the largest royal fortunes in the world, a secretive holding company laden with stakes in blue-chip Thai companies and prime land in the heart of Bangkok. The company covered the payment, reportedly close to $6 million.
Two years later, in 2016, the prince ascended to the throne. One of King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s first major acts was to transfer all the holdings in the vast company, known as the Crown Property Bureau, to his personal ownership, giving him control of more wealth than the reported riches of the Saudi king, the sultan of Brunei and the British royal family combined.
Those assets — conservatively valued at $70 billion — are now a focus of a pro-democracy movement clamoring for greater transparency into the monarchy’s finances and limits on its extensive powers.
Click here to keep reading. Shashank Bengali writes for Los Angeles Times.
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