Ousted Thai PM 'wants to buy Man City'

Toppled Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who previously made an unsuccessful bid for Liverpool FC, is trying to buy another Premiership soccer club, according to a pro-Thaksin website today.

The site – www.hi-thaksin.net – said the former prime minister was ready to pay more than £92.5m (€136.2m) for the Manchester City Football Club with partners from China and the Middle East.

The website said that Mohammed al-Fayed, the Egyptian billionaire owner of Harrods store and Fulham FC, was involved in the negotiations on behalf of Thaksin.

Nopadol Pattama, Thaksin’s lawyer and de-facto spokesman in Thailand, said he had read about the bid on the website but had not yet had time to ask Thaksin about it.

Thaksin, one of the country’s richest people, was toppled in a bloodless military coup last September, following months of mass street protests accusing him of massive corruption and abuse of power. He has since been spending time at his home in London and travelling in Europe and Asia.

In 2004, the then-prime minister made an unsuccessful attempt to buy Liverpool and had also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring other English soccer clubs.

The website was started by associates of Thaksin and frequently counters criticism against him by the current, military-backed government.