Thai ex-premier Thaksin spent half year in Germany (Roundup)

Jun 5, 2009, 13:16 GMT

Berlin - Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been convicted in absentia of corruption, spent half a year almost unnoticed in the German city of Bonn, a civic official confirmed Friday.

Thaksin's whereabouts had been a mystery since he ended a sojourn in London late last year. Friedel Frechen, a municipal spokesman in Bonn, said Thaksin showed up at the city immigration office last December 29 and applied for a residency permit.

It was revoked at the end of May after a rebuke from the German government with a warning that Thaksin's presence posed a risk to German foreign relations. Frechen said the revocation was served on Thaksin, 59, who appeared to have then departed.

Defending the immigration clerks, Frechen said Thaksin's name had not been on a list of people barred from Germany and he had presented all the necessary documents, including a certificate from a German federal justice agency saying he had no criminal record.

He had also proved he had adequate funds to live and a valid passport.

Officials said the absence of Thaksin's name from the list of barred persons was the result of a data-entry oversight by staff of the German Foreign Ministry.

A Thai court has sentenced billionaire Thaksin in absentia to two years' prison for conflict of interest. He has moved around the world, always one step ahead of arrest warrants from his homeland. His Thai passport has now been revoked.

The Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Thaksin was now using a Nicaraguan diplomatic passport.

Thaksin, who ruled from 2001 to 2006, was deposed in a military coup and continues to be revered by Thailand's populist red-shirt protest movement.

The Sueddeutsche said the discovery that the Bonn immigration office had issued Thaksin a permit triggered inter-agency suspicions in the German federal government. But neither the Foreign Ministry nor the BND foreign-intelligence service had known about the permit.

It said the billionaire, who stated he was living in Bonn's elegant suburb of Bad Godesberg, had been accompanied to the immigration office by a respected lawyer, a retired German police commander and a freelance troubleshooter, Werner Mauss.