Liverpool's chairman, David Moores, has come under pressure from human rights groups and supporters to reconsider a proposed £56.5-million investment in the club by a consortium fronted by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Thaksin yesterday said he had struck a deal to buy a significant proportion - believed to be just under 30 per cent - of the club after meeting Liverpool's chief executive, Rick Parry, in Bangkok. Parry is returning to Merseyside today to put the Thai's proposals to the board and, with no opposition expected, the deal is due to be concluded later this week.
Yet Thailand's less than impressive human rights record under the present coalition government led by Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party has prompted widespread unease, with Amnesty International claiming that, while advances have been made in the past decade, a climate of fear has built up under this government's leadership.
"Thailand's human rights record has been a particular concern recently following a government-led "drugs war" that has seen several thousand drugs suspects killed by law enforcement officers," said a spokesperson for Amnesty International. "In one three-month period alone last year, a staggering 2,245 people were killed according to official statistics. We have called on the Thai government to allow independent investigations into this worrying wave of killings."
A further 107 Muslims were killed last month in a brutal attempt to suppress an Islamic separatist insurgence in the Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces in southern Thailand. An Amnesty report published last November claimed critics of Thaksin have been intimidated, arrested and killed.
Rumours of the Thai's interest in Liverpool prompted an editorial in the latest issue of the fanzine Through the Wind and Rain to state: "We should have distanced ourselves from this guy from day one. If we had an ounce of humanity we should have said no immediately."
"He doesn't sound like a character you should be doing business with," said the fanzine's editor, Steven Kelly. "It's dragging morality into something where the majority of people say: 'As long as the team is good, I don't care'."
Parry and the club director Keith Clayton spent an hour with the prime minister at Government House in Bangkok yesterday discussing the proposal, which would see Moores issue new shares in the club, diluting his own 51 per cent stake and leaving him a major shareholder with about 36 per cent.
The move would marginalise the club's third-largest shareholder, Steve Morgan, who owns 5 per cent but had seen his proposed £50-million injection in return for Moores - with whom he endures a fractious relationship - diluting his holding rejected in March.
"We've talked and that's it," said Thaksin, who will obtain the commercial rights to Liverpool merchandise in Thailand and possibly the whole of Asia, with the club to establish an academy in Bangkok. "Now it's just up to Liverpool and then we'll be able to make an announcement. I've been a fan of Liverpool for some time. They are the tops in Thailand so it makes sense for us to be associated with such a brand."
