When Thaksin Shinawatra bought Manchester City in 2007, becoming the first Asian owner
of a Premier League club, he made quite the entrance.
The former Prime Minister of Thailand was brought on to the stage in Albert Square,
where he belted out what can be charitably described
as an under-rehearsed rendition of the city anthem Blue Moon, lyric sheet in hand.
But it was taken in good humour.
From then on, he was known to the fans as “Frank”, a billionaire
politician and telecoms magnate who promised to transform a club that had in recent years
been in the shadow of Sir Alex Ferguson's all conquering Manchester United side.
But as historic as the moment was, it wouldn't quite end up that way.
AT least not straight away.
Thaksin Shinawatara was born into an ethnically Chinese middle class family in the northern
Thai city of Chang Mai.
He joined the Royal Police before leaving to start a computer business which, in
turn, morphed into a highly successful mobile phone corporation that made him a billionaire.
He moved into politics, forming the populist Thai Rak Thai Party and won a landslide election
in 2001, harnessing overlooked rural voters,
and upsetting Bangkok's military elite who had been
involved in a dozen coup attempts since World War 2.
He was persistently dogged with accusations that he had acquired his wealth through corruption,
nepotism and graft, although Thaksin dismissed them all as lies told by disgruntled opponents.
Thaksin grew up loving English football, but a pivotal moment came in 2001, shortly after
his election, when Manchester United came to place
the Thai national team in an exhibition match in Bangkok.
Huge crowds followed the team wherever they went and Sir Alex Ferguson presented a
grinning Thaksin with a Manchester United shirt, complete with his name and the number
52, as it was his 52nd birthday.
Manchester United won 2-1, in front of 65,000 ecstatic fans.
After seeing the power and passion that could be harnessed from football, Thaksin started
looking in 2003 for a club for himself.
His first attempt was to buy a 30 per cent stake in Liverpool, but that floundered after
it emerged that one way the funds would be raised was
to set up a state lottery, essentially transferring wealth
from some of the poorest people on earth to the richest.
But there was also the thorny issue of human rights.
In 2003 Thaksin's government had untaken a brutal crackdown on the meta-amphetamine drug trade.
NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claimed that more than
2,000 died in extra-judicial killings.
Thaksin claimed the military had inflated the figures.
Even after he had won re-election in 2005, the first prime minister in Thailand's history
to peacefully win a second term, plans were afoot to buy a club.
But in 2006, when at the UN in New York, and deeply embroiled in a corruption scandal at
home over the sale of his company Shincorp, tanks
rolled on to the street to remove him from power.
Despite the human rights concerns, the Premier League approved his 2007 bid to buy Manchester
City for over £80 million.
He still had hopes of returning to power.
But now Thaksin had a Premier ​ League team to run.
He initially wanted to hire Claudio Ranieri but eventually plumped for Sven
Goren Erikson and life as a Premier League owner could not have begun any better.
City won the first three games of the season, including
a victory over Manchester United.
But as the results worsened, so did his relationship with Sven, who he sacked, ending his
honeymoon period with the fans.
The crucial moment, though, was his wife's conviction on corruption charges in Thailand.
Thaksin chose not to return to Thailand for fear of arrest and has been in exile ever since.
The military seized his assets, making it virtually
impossible for him to continue funding City, which he
said was costing him £4million a month in wages and transfer payments.
“To own a club in the Premier League you have to have deep, deep, deep, deep pockets,”
he said of that time.
“It burns your money quickly.
I feel very sad I had to sell.
I had no money after they froze my money.
I had to borrow here and there.”
Thaksin had to sell quickly but there was a little known buyer who had the cash.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan was a little known but leading member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, one of
the emirates of the United Arab Emirates.
His family were also one of the richest in the world, with
some estimates of their fortune stretching into the trillions of dollars.
Sheikh mansour bought the club for a rumoured £150 million, making Thaksin a handsome profit.
Overnight, Manchester City became the richest club in world football and Thaksin's turbulent
year in charge was over.
Thaksin has never returned to Thailand.
His sister Yingluck, won the 2011 election that followed the end of military rule.
But she too was removed in a coup largely due to fears in the military that
Thaksin might try and use his sister as a stepping stone to return to power.
Today, ay 69, Thaksin is divorced, has lost half of his $2billion fortune and living between
Dubai and Paris.
He says football club ownership is now beyond his means, but there is no doubt that he
blazed a trail for other Asian businessmen to invest in European football.
Some of those deals have gone well, like Thaksin's former ally and friend Vichai
Srivaddhanaprabha who bought Leicester City and later won the Premier League title.
Others have not gone so well, like Carston Yeung's purchase of Birmingham City in 2010.
Yeung has finally been removed from club, but he
is now in jail in Hong Kong for money laundering.
Thaksin still thinks of his time at Manchester City everyday.
When asked what the strongest memory of that time was, it wasn't a specific
football match, or his rendition of Blue Moon in Albert Square.
“When I went to work in the club, I saw a group of people and they wore all black,
like after funeral.
I asked them, “What can I help you with?”
they replied, “We are waiting for the official to
put the ash of my husband in the pitch.”
My god, I never knew this before.
He had been a fan for City of 42 years.
He passed away and asked to put ash on the pitch.’
He seemed as surprised by that in 2017 as he had in 2007.