Thread: Home of khon kaen billionaire shot up by gunmen

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Home of khon kaen billionaire shot up by gunmen

By Somphote Sombat
The Nation
Published on October 12, 2010


Two gunmen attacked the Khon Kaen home of a local billionaire businessman late on Sunday with automatic weapons and a grenade, but he had gone abroad. It appeared to be a second attempt on his life possibly resulting from a will left by his father.

Nawin Chaicheewinlikhit escaped death once in June in an ambush by gunmen while on the way to a wedding in Loei province.

Sunday's attack, seen in action-packed security footage, was the fourth aimed at taking lives of people in Nawin's family. There was one attempt on his father Cheewin before he died of sepsis in 2006, and a successful one on Aranya Luengsaeng-tham, Cheewin's second wife, in January 2008.

Nawin and Aranya were two of the three co-executors of Cheewin's will; the third has not been identified in press reports or by police. In his will, Cheewin said 14 people, including eight children born to his six wives, would not benefit from his assets in the billions of baht until after the 100th anniversary of his death.

The will says all 14 people will only enjoy interest or other fringe benefits of the assets in the meantime.

In his original will, Cheewin reportedly said his assets would be distributed in different proportions to all 14 people with immediate effect after his death, but he added the 100-year condition after he was wounded in an assassination attempt in 2003. He reportedly believed that the plot was perpetrated by one or more of the 14 beneficiaries.

Nawin, 48, was the first child of Cheewin born to Phayao, his first wife, who now lives abroad, while Aranya was Cheewin's second wife. In the first attack on Nawin, he was ambushed while on the way to see Khemika Jaijadee, the sixth wife of Cheewin, who had remarried.

Since the first attempt on his life, Nawin infrequently travels and is guarded full-time by four policemen. He left Thailand on Sunday for a trip to China and the four policemen were excused temporarily from his home, which the two gunmen attacked just hours after the officers left.

In the security footage, the two gunmen arrived on a motorcycle and walked to the front gate before one of them sprayed bullets from an AK-47 while the other stood guard. They then threw a grenade into the home before fleeing. The attack, which took place at 3.54am, damaged the home and a wall section along with four of five luxury cars parked in the compound. Three people who were inside the house were not injured.

Police cited the conflicts of interest among the surviving beneficiaries as the only motive behind such an attack. They vowed to make arrests within two weeks.