The Thai court again heard the Japanese billionaire Mitsuoka Shigetu, who has been demanding the country's authorities to return his children for the third year. The police have already found 15 offspring of the eccentric Japanese, but there may be many more. Ill-wishers claim that he is raising an army of descendants that will help him seize power. "Lenta.ru" found out what Shigeta really thinks.
Vassana learned about New Life from her sister. The firm has invited women from abroad who wish to give birth to infertile couples. They promised to pay ten thousand dollars for the service.
For a 30-year-old woman from Bangkok, this was a lot of money. Vassana finished nine classes and earned money by selling Thai sweets to tourists. There was barely enough money to live on, so she did not get out of debt. In addition to her and her eight-year-old son, seven other relatives huddled in a tiny apartment with mold on the walls.
Vassana.
Vassana's apartment.
Vassana decided that this was her chance, called New Life and agreed to become a surrogate mother. She did not know who her client was, but decided to dispense with unnecessary questions. “I thought if parents paid that much, they must be desperate for children,” she told The Associated Press two years later. "The agent told me it was a couple from abroad."
In June 2013, Vassana gave birth, and two months later she first met the father of the child. The long-haired Japanese man in the wrinkled shirt did not say a word to her. “I didn't even introduce myself. He just smiled and nodded. His lawyer spoke,”Vassana recalls. He demanded to sign a waiver of parental rights in favor of the client. The woman obeyed.
A year later, Vassana saw her client on TV. The news showed a police raid in the suburbs of Bangkok. In the condominium, they found nine children aged from two weeks to two years, seven nannies and a pregnant woman in her seventh month of pregnancy. Then the same Japanese appeared on the screen. The voice-over explained that all the children found belonged to this person. Upon learning of the raid, he bought a ticket for the next flight to Macau and flew out of the country.
Promotional video:
Mitsuoka Shigeta.
Shigeta
The Bangkok Post got hold of a copy of the passport of a large Japanese man, which indicated his name and age: Mitsuoka Shigeta, 24 years old. In the three years that have passed since then, there have been almost no details. Shigeta is rumored to have a business in Cambodia, a luxury apartment in Hong Kong and a finance firm in Japan, but there is no evidence of this.
Despite the lack of official information, almost no one doubts that Mitsuoka Shigeta's father is one of the richest people in Japan, the founder of Hikari Tsushin Yasumitsu Shigeta, whose fortune was estimated at $ 43 billion. Based on the company's financial records and list of shareholders, the billionaire's son has the same name and date of birth as the Bangkok Post picture.
Founder of the company * Hikari Tsushi * Yasumitsu Shigeta.
Police speculate that Shigeta began looking for surrogate mothers in 2012, but has shown interest in Thailand even earlier. He has visited the country regularly since 2010 and has been there over 40 times in four years. According to unconfirmed reports, during this time, the Japanese spent at least 500 thousand dollars on surrogate mothers. They were implanted with fertilized eggs donated by donors from Australia, USA, Sweden, China, Spain, Brazil, Malaysia and Israel.
No one knows exactly how many children Shigeta has. DNA testing has already confirmed paternity in 15 cases, and this is probably just the beginning. The Bangkok condominium, which was searched by the police, has 21 children registered. Most of them had already left the country by that time, and the Japanese took four of them to neighboring Cambodia personally. Shigeta's three other children live in Japan, but their origins are unknown.
Mariam Kukunashvili of New Life, which Vassana worked with, claims that the Japanese were not limited to Thailand. She had heard of his travels to India, where surrogate mothers gave birth to at least two children to Shigete. In addition, according to her, in 2011 he paid $ 100,000 to surrogate mothers in Ukraine.
Motives
In Bangkok, Shigeta had an established assembly line for the production of children. His agents delivered women, trusted doctors closely monitored their health during pregnancy, then a cesarean section - and another newborn is sent to an apartment in a condominium. At this point, lawyers take over the matter, who draw up parental rights and
documents for the child.
The director of the Thai bureau of Interpol admitted that Shigeta's motives baffle him. “So far, I can say that I have never seen anything like it,” he said. "We are trying to understand what kind of person you need to be in order to have so many children." At first, the police suspected that it was about human trafficking or the exploitation of child labor, but investigators were unable to prove either one or the other. There was a version that children are bred for the sake of stem cells, but this assumption was also not confirmed.
Investigator Decha Promsuvan, who worked on Mitsuoka Shigata's 2014 case.
New Life founder Mariam Kukunashvili claims that Shigata's plan was much crazier. The Japanese told her that he intends to nurture an army of loyal followers, which will lead him to power. “He wanted to win the election and use his large family to vote,” she was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. "He said he would have 10 to 15 children a year and would not stop until he died."
New Life and Shigata's brief partnership began in 2012, when he hired two surrogate mothers through the company. “As soon as they got pregnant, he demanded more,” says Kukunashvili. This seemed strange to her, and doubts only intensified when she found out about three more surrogate mothers whom the Japanese had found through another agency. To top it off, he tried to buy a semen freezer machine from her at home.
After that, Kukunashvili wrote about her suspicions to the headquarters of Interpol in France, as well as to the Japanese embassy, BBC News, CNN and Shigete himself. Only a Japanese lawyer answered. The letter said that his client does not deceive anyone, does not violate anything and very much hopes to continue cooperation with New Life.
Litigation
Shigeta himself does not deny that he dreams of dozens of descendants, but gives his actions a different explanation. He claims he needs heirs to share his fortune when he dies.
Japanese employees confirm that he cared for the offspring. According to the nannies, Shigeta regularly visited the children in the Bangkok condominium. The Thai authorities reported that in January 2015, his father decided to see his grandchildren. "These are legitimate children," Shigetu's former lawyer defended. - They have birth certificates. Property is bought in their name. They have bank savings accounts, investments. If he was selling children, why all this?"
His arguments did not convince the authorities of the country. All 12 of Shigeta's children found in Thailand ended up in a government orphanage. The child was left only to a pregnant surrogate mother who was found in the condominium. A month after the raid, she gave birth to a son and is now raising him herself under the supervision of social services.
Children of Mitsuoka Shigata.
In December 2014, six surrogate mothers who worked for Shigetu filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and demanded that the children be returned to them, whom they believed were illegally sent to an orphanage. A month later, the court returned three children, but the fate of the rest has not yet been decided.
The Japanese has been fighting the Thai authorities for his children for the fourth year. On February 8, he again appeared in court - though not in person, but via video link. Although he is not accused of anything, Shigeta is wary of returning to Thailand. The verdict is expected no earlier than February 20 and is unlikely to be final.
As for Vassana, she never saw her child again. Most likely, he now lives in Cambodia. Shigeta's money was only enough to pay off the debts. The woman lives in the same apartment and there is still mold on the walls.
Oleg Paramonov