Serbia’s Vucic doesn’t see problem in granting citizenship to ex Thai PM

Shinawatra was toppled in a coup in 2014, while her billionaire brother Thaksin, who was also prime minister, experienced the same fate in 2006.

According to the Nedeljnik weekly, Thaksin holds Montenegrin passport since 2009. He is widely known as a former owner of the English Manchester City soccer team.

“I don’t see why that (Shinawatra’s citizenship) is any problem for us, especially if the Government saw any economic or any other benefit for the country… Well, superb, bring people to our country. It’s better to bring people… we have lost many people due to poverty,” Vucic said, adding he advocated “an absolute liberalisation of Serbia’s passports.”

 However, Bosko Jaksic, a journalist and political analyst, saw a problem. “There is a reasonable doubt that it is about a corruption-mafia intrigue and the question is whether Serbia becomes a safe hose for corruption,” Jaksic told N1.

He added that there was a link between Shinawatra and Muhammad Yousuf Dahlan, a former leader of the Fatah Party, who was also granted Serbia’s citizenship, and that the link was Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, “Vucic’s great friend, and a business partner of both families (Shinawatra and Dahlan.)”

If not the citizenship, Serbia’s authorities granted political asylum to the businessmen Sebastian Gica from Romania and Cvetan Vasilev from Bulgaria, both charged or convicted of corruption at home.