When Vorapak Tanyawong joined Thailand’s Finance Ministry in September 2025, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul called him a trusted financial expert and gave him a specific job: lead the government task force tracking money flows from Southeast Asia’s scam networks. Thirty-three days later, Vorapak resigned. The investigative outlet Whale Hunting had reported his wife received $3 million in cryptocurrency from a network connected to Benjamin Mauerberger, the South African fugitive at the center of Thailand’s largest scam-linked asset freeze. Vorapak denied it. He called it a smear campaign. No cryptocurrency was received, he said.
At the same press conference, he admitted meeting Yim Leak, the Cambodian businessman whose name now sits atop 20.4 billion baht ($620 million) in frozen assets. He said he was unaware that his name and photograph appeared on the BIC Group website identifying him as an adviser. His investment vehicle, Pilgrim Finansa, intersected in Thai corporate filings with Capital Asia Investments, the Singapore fund manager that the Monetary Authority of Singapore would raid five months later. MAS arrested two directors and seized more than S$160 million. It cited “serious control failings” in anti-money laundering compliance.
The man Anutin chose to follow the money was linked to the money.
Thailand’s capital market froze 8.27 billion baht in securities and trading accounts on April 8 under AMLO Transaction Committee Order Y.96/2569. That same market allowed those accounts to accumulate those positions without triggering enforcement. The Securities and Exchange Commission that now pledges cooperation with AMLO was criticized for not investigating the Thai exposure of Capital Asia Investments, whose suspicious share-trading in Thai blue chips had been reported publicly since September 2025. The SEC announced new source-of-funds requirements on April 7, 2026. Six months after the red flags were in the open.
Combined with earlier Civil Court orders in case F 31/2569, the total reached 102 items valued at 20.392 billion baht. The predicate offences AMLO alleges are drug crimes, human trafficking, public fraud and participation in a transnational criminal organization. Mauerberger and Yim Leak’s lawyers have denied the charges.
Anutin fronted the April 9 briefing in Bangkok, standing beside a seized Ferrari, telling reporters his government would act “without interference or special treatment.” In December 2025, photographs surfaced showing Anutin and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas with Mauerberger at multiple locations, on different occasions. Anutin said they were taken in 2014, that he knew Mauerberger through “a friend of a friend,” five or six times at events. Pheu Thai spokesperson Seuksit Srijomkwan told reporters the photos showed dining together and traveling abroad together. Thanadol Suwannarit, a member of the Office of the Prime Minister who acts for Deputy PM Thamanat Prompow, previously served on Mauerberger’s legal team, according to the same Khaosod report.
The December 2025 seizures came one day after those photographs surfaced.
Six billion baht in Bangchak Corporation shares frozen in Yim Leak-linked trading accounts that month sat on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, held through regulated brokerage accounts, Reuters reported. Bangchak told investors the matter concerned an individual shareholder, not company operations. Capital Asia Investments held positions in other Thai-listed companies. Through its Optimum Fund VCC, the firm paid 610 million baht for a 49% stake in a subsidiary of Sansiri, one of Thailand’s largest property developers, in March 2025.
BIC Bank Cambodia, chaired by Yim Leak, held a 9.99% stake in Finansia X, a Thai brokerage, before offloading it in March 2025 to Rapidfire Technologies Limited, a Hong Kong company established weeks before the purchase. Finansia X told Kaohoon International it could not examine the shareholder data behind that transaction. Finansia X is the same brokerage where Vorapak had acquired a 29% stake through Pilgrim Finansa in 2021.
Thailand’s oil fund deficit has reached 57.7 billion baht, growing at 1.24 billion baht per day. The Bank of Thailand has cut rates to 1% and pledged to hold, forecasting growth as low as 1.3% if Middle East tensions persist. Thai sovereign bonds are among the world’s worst performers since the Iran war. The scam crackdown is the one arena where Anutin can project decisive action.
Dentons Pisut, the Bangkok law firm representing the Yim family, traced a specific transaction in statements published in February and March 2026. On March 3, 2021, Yim Leak delivered $1 million to a foreign-exchange provider in Cambodia for conversion to Thai baht. His Thai bank account received approximately 30 million baht in multiple deposits, one of which came from an account belonging to Tangthai Banmahing. The family said Yim Leak had never met Tangthai, had no control over the originating account, and that the transaction reflected a pooled-account settlement mechanism operated by a foreign-exchange provider. The Chonburi Provincial Court confirmed Tangthai operated a money-exchange business. She received a suspended sentence.
Under Thai law, Dentons argued, primary due diligence obligations rest with financial intermediaries, not downstream recipients. If that argument holds, the failure is at Thai banks.
Dentons also stated that AMLO had investigated and frozen Yim Leak-linked assets in 2024, reviewed the documentation, and returned them. If accurate, the current case is a second attempt.
In December 2025, Anutin ordered the Interior Ministry to revoke Yim Leak’s Thai citizenship, obtained through marriage under Section 6 of the nationality law. In February 2026, Dentons Pisut stated that Yim Leak “has never held Thai nationality and has never held a Thai passport.” Both claims sit in the Thai public record.
Three smaller Civil Court cases filed the same week target Chen Zhi, the US-sanctioned founder of Prince Group extradited from Cambodia to China on January 6, with 345 million baht in frozen Thai assets; Kok An, a Cambodian senator whose Crown Casino complexes were linked by Amnesty International to compounds where forced labor and torture were documented, with 560 million baht; and a Thai associate, 46 million baht.
Yim Leak holds the honorary title Oknha, a designation reserved for significant donors to the Cambodian state, and is identified on BIC Group’s website as chairman of a conglomerate spanning banking, insurance, trading, marine and property development across Cambodia and Thailand. BIC Bank was incorporated in November 2017 and licensed by the National Bank of Cambodia in July 2018. In September 2020, NBC approved the transfer of two founding shareholders’ stakes to Yim Leak personally, according to BIC Bank’s website and the Cambodia Business Directory. The bank remains listed among Cambodia’s 58 licensed commercial banks. Its SWIFT code is active. BIC Markets, the group’s retail trading platform, states all client funds are held in segregated trust accounts at BIC Bank.
No public NBC enforcement action regarding BIC Bank appears in the public record. No Cambodian government statement has addressed the Thai proceedings. Cambodia’s parliament passed the country’s first dedicated anti-scam law on April 3.
Mauerberger left Bangkok last September for Dubai. He departed Dubai on February 13 aboard an 85-metre yacht called Wanderlust and is believed to be in the Seychelles, according to Whale Hunting. His lawyer, Witoon Kengngan, told reporters in March the case was a civil dispute over share sales and that the investigation appeared to be moving with “unusual speed and visibility”, raising questions about a political dimension. Thai authorities have stated they intend to pursue an Interpol Red Notice, though contradictory statements from the Central Investigation Bureau in March and April leave the status unclear.
AMLO secretary-general Thepsu Bowornchotedara said the agency is preparing to invite victims to submit compensation claims. Claims can be filed within 90 days. The SEC filed criminal complaints in a separate share-manipulation case in December 2025 and referred it to AMLO as a predicate offence. Under Thai law, asset forfeiture can proceed without a criminal conviction.
The luxury yacht Atlas, registered to Mauerberger, is being prepared for auction by the Royal Thai Navy. Its owner is somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
