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Somchai Khunpluem


Somchai Khunpluem, alternatively spelled Kunplome (Thai: สมชาย คุณปลื้ม), born 30 September 1937 in Chonburi, Thailand is a Thai politician, businessman and organized crime boss. He is also known under his nickname "Kamnan Poh" (Thai: กำนันเป๊าะ, "subdistrict headman Poh"). He is highly influential in his home province of Chonburi and the whole eastern region and has therefore been dubbed "godfather of Chonburi" or "godfather of the east" by Thai media. Somchai was long-term mayor of Saen Suk, Mueang Chonburi District.

Somchai was born as the son of a village headman, the second of eight siblings. He dropped out of school after grade four and started working as a teenager. He began as a restaurant bus boy before starting his own bus service. After some time as a monk and as a soldier, he became the partner of a French businessman active in the fishing industry in 1963. He married Satil Sancharoen, daughter of a fish trader. Later he expanded to the building sector, establishing his company Bang Saen Maha Nakhon. In 1968, he became headman ("kamnan") of Saen Suk sub-district. He opened a liquor distributorship, and later broadened his economic empire to several other industries. Most profitable were his activities in the construction and real estate sectors. He engaged in illegal activities like smuggling strategic goods during the Vietnam war and the Cambodian Civil War. The national government started to develop the eastern seaboard as an industrial region in the 1980s. Somchai became a key intermediary between the central government and multinational and local investors. This spurred the rise of his economic and political influence which he, in turn, used to provide for a further boost of the urban and industrial development of his home province. In 1989, Saen Suk (which includes the much frequented beach resort of Bang Saen) received the status of a municipality and Somchai, as the only candidate, became its first mayor. After the Thai Nation Party, which Somchai supported, won the national election in 1995 and its leader Banharn Silpa-archa became prime minister, he was often rewarded with government contracts. The combined assets of the Khunpluem and Sancharoen families were estimated on four billion baht in 2004.


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