The supreme court in Bangkok has delivered a political earthquake, albeit not one entirely unexpected: Thaksin Shinawatra, the billionaire tycoon who reshaped Thai politics in the early 2000s and became a household name around the region has been sentenced a new one-year jail term.

The ruling stems from a long-running controversy over whether the former prime minister ever properly served out a corruption sentence imposed when he returned from self-imposed exile in 2023. After 15 years abroad, his 2023 return saw him ‘technically’ facing eight years in prison according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Yet he never served a full 24-hours in a jail cell. Instead, prison officials in Thailand transferred him to a hospital ward, citing unspecified health concerns.

He remained in the prison hospital for six months before walking free on parole in what many Thais read as evidence of influence peddling and back-room bargaining.

At the time, his Pheu Thai political party was assembling a governing coalition with its former military adversaries but uneasy compromise unravelled earlier today – September 9, when Thailand’s supreme court, after studying his medical records and listening to around 20 witnesses from the medical and prison professions decided he had in fact been evading justice.

As a result, Thaksin, now 76, will serve a year in prison, or as Thai cynics online are already saying, may be out by tomorrow having wangled another deal to escape his jail cell.