More royal loot

Siam Bioscience, owned by King Vajiralongkorn, reportedly received at least 600 million baht from the military-monarchy regime to subside its development of production capacity for an AstraZeneca contract to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine.

It has now reported a profit of 1.69 billion baht.

Readers will recall that this manufacture of vaccines would be “under a ‘no profit, no loss’ policy, meaning it would sell the vaccines at cost.”

Clipped from The Rand Blog

This profit is a “near 50-fold increase in annual profit…”. Founded in 2009 by the dead king’s Crown Property Bureau, and now owned by Vajrialongkorn, Siam Bioscience “had since been loss-making and reported its first profit only in 2020 of 35.7 million baht ($995,000).”

Reuters reports that “[p]rofit soared a whopping 4,650% to 1.69 billion baht and revenues increased by 1,500% to a record 4.9 billion baht, aided by its contract to manufacture 200 million doses of the Anglo-Swedish firm’s COVID-19 vaccine.”

As far as PPT can discern, it is still not known how much vaccine the company has actually made or their distribution.

Of course, as the report makes clear, the regime’s “deal came under fire from a prominent Thai opposition politician [Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit] who questioned why the contract went to a company that was owned by the king and had never made vaccines before.” He now faces a lese majeste charge.