Thai Court Says Japanese Tycoon Can Raise His 13 Surrogate Children

A Japanese man won sole custody of 13 children he fathered through surrogate mothers in Thailand in a case that helped change the law about surrogacy in the Southeast Asian country.

A Thai court ruled on Tuesday that 28-year-old Mitsutoki Shigeta could become the sole legal guardian to the children as he has a clean record and the financial means to take care of them.

"For the happiness and opportunities which the 13 children will receive from their biological father, who does not have a history of bad behaviour, the court rules that all 13 born from surrogacy to be legal children of the plaintiff," Bangkok's Central Juvenile Court said in a statement, quoted in AFP.

The man is the son of a Japanese tycoon and the president of a company listed on the stock exchange as well as an investor in several other businesses, the court noted.

While the company's name was not cited, Japanese and Thai media have previously identified Shigeta as being the son of Yasumitsu Shigeta, the founder and chairman of Hikari Tsushin, an electronics retailer.

The so-called "Baby Factory" case emerged in 2014, when Thai police found nine babies living with nine nannies in his apartment in Bangkok and then linked his DNA to four other infants born from surrogate mothers.The case helped highlight the largely unregulated and lucrative commercial surrogacy business in the country. Thailand banned the practise in 2015.

Shigeta paid surrogate mothers around $10,000 each for carrying the fertilized donor eggs in their wombs. The founder of the New Life clinic that provided Shigeta with two surrogate mothers Mariam Kukunashivili told the Associated Press in 2014 the Japanese man had political ambitions. According to her, Shigeta told the clinic's manager he "wanted to win elections and could use his big family for voting," and that "the best thing I can do for the world is to leave many children."

Thai authorities investigated Shigeta for human trafficking and child exploitation, but filed no charges. He carried out a three-year legal battle for custody, although he was not present in court on Tuesday as he left Thailand when the case emerged. "It is clear that my client has nothing to do with human trafficking and no criminal charges have been pressed against him," his lawyer Kong Suriyamonthon said, quoted in Kyodo News.

The children, who had spent the past four years in foster care, would be brought to Japan where Shigeta arranged for nurses and nannies to help taking care of them and planned to set up bank accounts for them. "He has personal and business reasons. He was born in a big family, so he wants his children to grow up together," Kong said, quoted in Reuters.