Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has hit back at a critic who claims that a golf course owned by his family in Pak Chong district of Nakhon Ratchasima might be encroaching on agricultural reform land.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives is planning to look into the land title document of the golf course at the Rancho Charnvee Resort & Country Club owned by the Bhumjaithai Party leader, who is also the interior minister.
Mr Anutin said on Friday that the issue had been raised to attack him politically, and that he was ready to defend himself.
Thanadol Suwannarit, an adviser to the agriculture minister, told Inside Thailand on Friday that the planned investigation follows the discovery of the illegal expansion of the Lam Takong self-help settlement project in Nakhon Ratchasima.
A preliminary investigation found the group had encroached on several prohibited areas, including forest reserves, national park land, watershed forest planting zones, state property under the Treasury Department, and Agricultural Land Reform Office (Alro) land reform areas, he said.
Exploiting a legal loophole, land rights were issued to members of the settlement project, which, after five years, can be renewed as full land title deeds, said Mr Thanadol, who also chairs the Alro land use investigation committee.
The disputed areas include a 40,000-rai plot of land covering eight sub-districts in Pak Chong district at the foot of Khao Yai National Park, he said. Located in the area were a hotel owned by a political lobbyist and a golf course owned by a high-profile politician that he did not name.
Mr Thanadol said the golf course had a legal land rights document. However, the ministry will look into how the operators of the golf course and the hotel obtained the land, as part of it was located in the Alro area.
Mr Anutin said the golf course was his family business, and the land title deed and legal paperwork were issued decades ago. He said he is ready to submit the land title documents for scrutiny, while calling the investigation unsportsmanlike.
The flap over the golf course is the latest in a series of long-running dramas involving land owned by ultra-wealthy politicians in the governing coalition.
The agriculture ministry is controlled by the Kla Dharma Party, whose most influential figure is Thamanat Prompow. He abandoned the Palang Pracharath Party after it fell out of favour with Thaksin Shinawatra, the de facto leader of the Pheu Thai Party, and was banished from the government benches.
Recently the Interior Ministry, controlled by Mr Anutin’s party, revoked the land title to the Alpine Golf and Sports Club in Pathum Thani, owned by the Shinawatra family.
That move was seen in some quarters as payback for a campaign by the Ministry of Transport, controlled by the Pheu Thai Party, to take back land in Khao Kradong district of Buri Ram.
The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) is seeking to reclaim the land, accusing the Department of Lands, under the Interior Ministry, of malfeasance for issuing land title deeds to occupants.
Those occupants include a football stadium and a race track owned by Newin Chidchob, considered the patriarch of the Bhumjaithai Party.
Mr Anutin’s family are the majority shareholders of Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction Plc, where he served as CEO before entering politics.