The billionaire who lost his country

Coup! BRUCE PALLING on the arrogant tycoon who got his comeuppance
The fate of Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's former Prime Minister, should be a lesson for all those Third World leaders who use their new private jets to attend important international meetings and mingle with the rich and powerful.
No sooner had he arrived at the UN headquarters in New York than his military commander-in-chief ousted him in a coup.
His flight to London today in his spanking new Air Force One could well be his last outing at government expense. Fortunately for him, he did manage to sell his family telecommunications business earlier this year, taking a personal slice of just under $2bn. And he didn't pay any tax on it either.
He thought Thailand should be run like a business, with him as CEO barking orders The one thing most people in the West known about Thaksin is that he is a very rich businessman with an image problem. He is far more complex and interesting than that.
A former police colonel, he made a fortune through political connections which enabled him to win lucrative concessions for the first Thai mobile network and then later to control Thailand's original telecoms satellite. He also owned stakes in airlines and luxury hotel groups.
That was his real problem. Thaksin thought that Thailand should be run like a business and that as he was the CEO, all he had to do was bark out his orders and then get onto the next issue. It all nearly came unstuck in his first year in office, when a court charged him with a highly technical corruption crime. Fortunately for him, he was vindicated in an 8-7 vote - something that won't happen again. To his credit, Thaksin was the first Thai political leader to be elected on policies and not personality. In 2001, he had three simple pledges - to wage war on poverty, drugs and corruption.
Unfortunately his drugs policy was waged with real bullets and more than 2,500 petty drug dealers and others were simply wiped out without any legal constraints on the police. As for corruption, he certainly did nothing to halt that; in fact he was responsible for allowing it to flourish by stacking every institution he could with his own cronies and yes-men. On poverty, he at least managed to shift vast sums into the rural areas, which explains his fervent support in the countryside.
However, his dreadful record on civil liberties and press freedom plus his disastrous military campaign against Muslim separatists in the South has completely alienated not just Thailand's urban chattering His greatest weakness is arrogance - who cares if the public are revolting?
classes but also powerful military forces close to the King.
But his greatest weakness is arrogance. He refused to listen to advice - who cares if the public are revolting? The only thing he unwaveringly believed in was the polls and they showed him to be winning.
So what next? His closest friend in London is Mohammed Fayed and he is rumoured to have purchased one of the Egyptian's flats on Park Lane. (He has already acquired an expensive apartment off Kensington High Street for his daughter.)

He might buy himself a football club: he has expressed interest in the past in Fulham and Liverpool. Who knows, his remaining television channels in Thailand could become outlets for his sporting content - now that they have ceased being useful for his propaganda campaigns.