According to Thairath, Ms. Jakapong Anne Jakrajutatip, former CEO of JKN Global and former president of Miss Universe, has just been arrested by a Thai court for failing to appear in court in a 30 million Baht fraud case.
According to the lawsuit, from July 24 to August 8, 2023, Ms. Anne and JKN Global were accused of providing false information to lure investors to buy bonds.
Ms. Anne, 46 years old, is a famous transgender businesswoman in Thailand. In 2022, she bought the Miss Universe Organization (MUO), the organizer of the Miss Universe contest, for 20 million USD.
She was the CEO of JKN Global Group. However, this group encountered a financial crisis and had to submit a bankruptcy application and resumed business in 2024.
In January 2024, Ms. Anne had to sell 50% of MUO shares. That same year, she left the position of CEO of MUO.
In addition to business, Ms. Anne has appeared in many TV shows such as Project Runway or Shark tank Thailand and is known as the "Queen of Indian content distribution" when bringing the Bollywood series to Thailand.
Before becoming a billionaire, Anne Jakkaphong had gone through a poor youth. In an interview, Ms. Anne burst into tears talking about her time being bullied and sexually harassed while studying abroad.
After graduating, at the age of 21, Anne returned to Thailand to take over her father's discotheque rental shop but the business was not profitable. Then he turned to film production and this became the first major source of income, laying the foundation for his journey to become a businessman later.
Thanks to importing international content to sell to Thai TV stations, after a while, Ms. Anne founded JKN Global Media (later JKN Global Group) with an initial capital of only 26,500 USD. The group quickly expanded to film production, advertising, distributing functional foods and holding copyrights of many programs and films from Korea, India, China, the Philippines to the US.
According to Marca, she once owned 15 companies operating in communications, advertising and consumer goods.
In 2020, Ms. Anne was 149th on the list of Thai billionaires. Forbes ranked Ms. Anne as the third richest transgender person in the world, with an estimated net worth of 210 million USD in 2020.
In June this year, Ms. Anne resigned from any executive position at JKN after being accused of financial reporting manipulation and fined 4.1 million Baht, and banned from holding the role of director or manager for 56 months.
