Hundreds of nude photos of Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s official mistress have been leaked to anti-monarchy activists, a report said on Tuesday.
About 1,400 selfies of Sineenat “Koi” Wongvajirapakdi – many of them sexually explicit – were reportedly leaked earlier this year to prominent critics of the Thai monarchy living abroad, according to The Daily Beast.
“There were 1,400 photos on four different iPhones. Some of them were very intimate photos, “one of the recipients, British commentator Andrew MacGregor Marshall, told the press.
Marshall said he received a letter – originally sent to an address he no longer uses – containing an SD card with the photos.
The letter bore what he claimed to be a “false return address” associated with the German intelligence headquarters in Berlin, he told The Daily Beast.
“I decided not to publish them,” Marshall said. “Obviously they were sent to me without her consent, but I also just saw that it was a faction palace game.”
Marshall said he received the mysterious letter in August, about the same time Wongvajirapakdi, 35, was released from custody after a dispute with the Thai queen over joining the king’s harem of “sex soldiers”.
Reports from the time of Wongvajirapakdi’s detention in October 2019 said that he tried to usurp the queen.
Marshall also said he received a threat when the SD card was sent to him.
“At the beginning of August, my house in Scotland was guarded and a threat was left at the door, so it was a pretty worrying time and the last thing I wanted was to get involved in palace politics,” he said. he told The Daily Beast.
While Marshall did not publicly release any of the photos, he confirmed that he received them in support of another critic of the Thai monarchy, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, who released them.
“From the moment it was clearly an attempt to sabotage her return to court,” Marshall told reporters. “In any royal court you have factional struggles. It is a notorious element of palace life. When you are a monarch with a wife and a queen and you are called a consort, this is a recipe for vicious battles. “
The 68-year-old eccentric billionaire king was rushed to hospital after a coronavirus scare in October, but has not been reported to be in good health since.