Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Thai Prime Minister and former owner of Manchester City Football Club, was sentenced to two years in jail for corruption yesterday as prosecutors in Bangkok sought to have him extradited from exile in Britain.

The Thai Supreme Court found him guilty of abusing his position as Prime Minister, the first of a series of verdicts due against the former leader, who was deposed in a bloodless coup in 2006.

His conviction is the latest episode in an extraordinary political drama involving Thaksin, which has convulsed Thailand over the past five years. The panel of nine judges convicted him by the narrowest margin, 5-4.

Speaking from London, Thaksin told Reuters news agency: “I had long anticipated that it would turn out this way.”

Thai prosecutors immediately said that they would present the ruling to the British Government and press for Thaksin’s speedy extradition.

The billionaire, who made his fortune in telecommunications, fled to London after the military coup in 2006 and bought a house in Kensington, West London, and the Manchester City club. In February he returned home, was arrested and bailed and promised to defend himself against the corruption charges. He was allowed by the court to attend the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. But instead of returning to Bangkok, he and his wife fled to London. In September he sold Manchester City to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, of the United Arab Emirates, for £200 million.

Thaksin was the most popular, but also the most divisive, Prime Minister that Thailand has known. His health-care schemes and a programme of cheap loans won him the love of rural voters long ignored by the metropolitan political class, and carried him to three successive election victories.

But many middle-class urban Thais abhorred him, accusing him of using his vast wealth to corrupt the country’s institutions and make it impossible to unseat him and his supporters.

The accusations of corruption have not been easy to prove in court. Yesterday’s verdict was the first conviction against Thaksin, 59, in two years of investigation. His wife, Potjaman, was acquitted of all charges in the case, which concerned her purchase in 2003 of a 772 million baht (£13 million) plot of land in Bangkok. However, the court found that a government agency sold the property at Thaksin’s behest for a third of its market value.

In 2007, the year after it forced Thaksin from power, the Thai military ceded power in a democratic election with a revised constitution that excluded him from politics. The election was won by a party formed by his supporters, regarded by the opposition as Thaksin puppets.

Since August, members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy have occupied the Prime Minister’s office in Bangkok, demanding that the Government should step down. One Prime Minister, Sundaravej Samak, was forced to quit after a ruling that he improperly accepted money for an appearance on a television cookery programme. His successor, Somchai Wongsawat, has done little to quell antiThaksin rage: he is the former Prime Minister’s brother-in-law.

Any extradition attempt will be made under a treaty of 1911 between Britain and the Kingdom of Siam, as Thailand was known then. Such a process would be long and complicated, particularly if Thaksin applies for asylum in Britain.

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