Liverpool Football Club: Thailand has been able to secure two seats on Liverpool's board of directors as part of its bid for a 30% stake in the premier league football club, the Thai chief negotiator said on his return from talks in Liverpool.
Deputy Commerce Minister Pongsak Raktapongpisal said Thailand was conducting "due diligence" financial scrutiny of the Liverpool football club, and a deal would be signed within four to eight weeks if no other problems arose.
He also said the two sides had resolved the thorny issue of how much control the Thai company managing the 4.6 billion-baht (£62 million - US$110 million) investment would have over the 112-year-old British football club.
"I think Thailand will be able to send two representatives to take up director seats in the Liverpool football club," Pongsak told reporters on arrival at Bangkok airport.
The Liverpool club's website lists 12 people on its board of directors, including chairman David Moores, chief executive Rick Parry, and the team manager, a post held until earlier this week by Frenchman Gerard Houllier.
Pongsak said Thailand 's Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, for whom the Liverpool bid has provided a boost to political fortunes, would not be taking up either of the director seats currently.
The four times champions of Europe is for 51% owned by Moores, whose family has had control over the Liverpool club for half a century, and is for 9.9% owned by British television company Granada.
According to Thaksin, the Thai deal will dilute Moores holding to 35%. Thaksin has said that his offer, to be funded by a very controversial one-off national lottery in Thailand, would inject $110 million into Liverpool, which needs cash to buy new players and pay for a bigger stadium.
Ponsgsak said Thailand would certainly not seek to influence Liverpool's decision in picking a new manager following Houllier's sacking on Monday. "That is an internal matter for the Liverpool club. We wouldn't intervene," he said.
Although the bid appears to have gone down well with the "Soccer-Mad Thai Public", the planned use of public or lottery money rather than Thaksin's own vast personal fortune, has raised many eyebrows in Thailand and led to accusations of abuse of political power.
A group of leading Thai academics on Wednesday said the bid violated an article of the constitution which forbids the state from competing with the private sector unless in the interests of national security or to set up public utilities.
To cite the Liverpool deal as "National Thai Sport Development" is just a pretext to justify what is in fact a distortion in the exercise of state power, the Thai academics said in a letter quoted on the front page of the Nation newspaper in Thailand.
