The Marshal's Minor Wives & Major Tickel

On his deathbed in a Bangkok hospital, Thailand's Premier Sarit Thanarat held his comely wife in his arms and sang to her the old Thai ballad that begins: "The love of 100 mistresses could not be compared to the love one has for his own wife." Sarit may have been altogether too modest. After his death last December (of cirrhosis and other ailments of hard living), Bangkok papers carried the names of more than a hundred women who claimed publicly to have enjoyed his favors and hoped to get a piece of his estate. Among an inner circle of 51 mistresses, whom the old-school Thais delicately call "minor wives," Marshal Sarit had generously scattered villas, autos and other largesse, and fathered at least nine children. Many minor wives actually filed court claims for a share of Sarit's tickels, or baht, as Thais call their money.

Indeed, thanks to the energetic strongman's flair for financial wheeling-dealing, his fortune turned out to be even more spectacular than his dalliance balance. Contesting Widow Thanpuying Vichitra's claim to the marshal's estate, Sarit's two sons by a previous wife estimated that their father was worth at least 2.8 billion tickels, or $143 million. That seemed a lot of baht for a career soldier. So, before allowing his estate to be distributed, Sarit's successor, Thanom Kittikachorn, appointed a five-man committee to see if any government funds had lodged in Sarit's pocket.

Last week the investigating committee published an interim report disclosing that it had unearthed 400 million tickels ($20 million) in various bank accounts maintained by the late strongman. Even that was peanuts compared with the total value of his nationwide commercial empire, which included a controlling interest--mostly in the names of Sarit's relatives--in at least 15 specially privileged companies. Among them: the only merchant bank allowed to import gold; the only sales agency for the government plywood monopoly; a brewery with a heady share of the government beer monopoly; two companies with concessions to print and sell tickets for the national lottery; a construction firm with major government contracts. Sarit also owned a commercial fishing boat, some 50 autos, 30 Bangkok villas and a 3,000-acre farm.

As to whether Sarit had actually dipped into the till, the committee said that to date it had traced $17.8 million of government money to Sarit's estate. Committee Chairman Phra Manuvej Vimolmath said that part of a state fund of 12 million tickels ($600,000) had gone exclusively to Sarit's minor wives. The money, he said, came from a special government account known as the Funds for Secret Work.

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