— 5 years ago(October 14, 2020 11:33 AM)

want answers.
Thailand
’s
King Maha Vajiralongkorn
is carried on a palanquin during his coronation in
Bangkok
in 2019. (Sakchai Lalit/ASSociated Press).
SINGAPORE —
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.
In August, students at
Thammasat University
demanded
the king
restore the assets to
Crown Property Bureau
control and place it under government oversight — a startling act of defiance in a country where a strict royal insult law has traditionally silenced criticism of the monarchy.
Students raise a three-finger salute during a pro-democracy protest at
Thammasat University
outside
Bangkok
in August. The salute was borrowed from the
Hollywood
movie “
The Hunger Games
.”. (Sakchai Lalit/ASSociated Press).
Some protesters have also called for a boycott of
Siam Commercial Bank
, in which
the king
holds a nearly 24% stake. Fears of a run on deposits prompted a director of
Thailand
’s central bank to reassure investors that there was sufficient liquidity in the country’s financial institutions.
“When the protesters talk about the monarchy as an institution, the
CPB
is at the core,” said
Pongkwan Sawasdipakdi
, a lecturer at
Thammasat
and a doctoral candidate in international relations at
USC
. “One of the top things that people think about is how can the monarchy accumulate such really high wealth and we don’t really know anything about it.”.
Questions over spending by an aloof monarch, who lives in
Germany
and whose expensive lifestyle stands in contrast to stories of his thrifty father, emerged as
Thailand
’s economy reels from the
China Virus
pandemic, which followed years of tepid growth under a military-led government closely tied to the ruling family.
Opposition politicians led by lawmaker
Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit
have also challenged an additional $1 billion in public funds earmarked for
the monarchy
in the 2020 budget — including security, travel, ceremonies and “special activities” — while the economy is projected to shrink by 8%.
Tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators have gathered in rallies since early summer, a remarkable political reawakening in a country that abolished the absolute monarchy in favor of a parliamentary system in 1932 but has steadily drifted away from democratic rule. The army, with royal support, has toppled a succession of civilian governments and now controls the parliament and nearly every state institution.
The military, in turn, fell in line when the king took over the
Crown Property Bureau
, whose enormous interests “enter into almost every significant area of Thai economic life,”
Porphant Ouyyanont
, a late
Thai
academic who was the leading authority on the bureau, wrote in a 2015 paper.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha
bows before
King Maha Vajiralongkorn
during the royal coronation in 2019.
(
Thai Royal Household Bureau
).
Created in 1936 to manage the crown’s institutional assets and cover some of its expenses, the bureau operates in a legal netherworld — neither a government agency, nor a private institution, nor part of the palace — and in near-total secrecy from inside a butterscotch-yellow,
Italianate
villa in
Bangkok
’s leafy royal district.
Its board of directors, handpicked by
the king
, doesn’t release financial statements. Much of its holdings, especially in land, remain a mystery. But the estimated portfolio makes him the world’s richest monarch, a man who owns lakeside villas outside
Munich
and rents out a hotel in the
Bavarian Alps
.
The bureau’s biggest corporate investments — in
Siam Commercial Bank
and
Siam Cement Group
, an industrial conglomerate in which it holds a 34% stake — were together worth about $8 billion at the end of last year, according to the companies’ annual reports. Although the bank’s shares have lost half their value during the pandemic, dividends from the two publicly traded companies generated $342 million in income for
the king
in 2019.
A branch o