Thailand’s Buddhist temples have long been tainted with allegations of greed, corruption, sex, murder and child abuse, while monks, sworn to lives of abstinence, have often been caught living compromisingly flashy lifestyles.

But while there were previously seen as untouchable, over the past month the Thai military government have suddenly moved to crack down on corruption in the temples, arresting six of the country’s most high-profile monks. A seventh fled to Frankfurt to seek asylum, with the Thai authorities following him to Europe in hot pursuit.

It is the military junta’s boldest move towards cleaning up the Sangha, the name of the Thai Buddhist order, and among the six arrested are several elderly monks on the Sanghka supreme council, the country’s Buddhist governing body. Two senior abbots at Bangkok’s famous Golden Mount temple were also among those arrested but most surprising was the arrest of Phra Buddha Issara, a rightwing firebrand monk known both for his political activism and his alleged ties to the Thai prime minister Prayut Chan-ocha. Both serve in the Queen’s guard military unit, though Prayut now denies any connection to Issara.

“The arrest of these monks is clearly designed to place the state in control over any monks who might stray from loyalty to the junta, especially as we are approaching elections,” said Paul Chambers, a lecturer at Naresuan university who specialises in Thai politics. “This is their way of demonstrating that the state is really above the Buddhist sangha.”

While the military junta, who took over Thailand in a bloodless coup in 2014, have long pledged to stamp out corruption, the timing of the four temple raids has been seen as significant and politically motivated. Prayut’s government are under greater pressure than ever to follow through on their promise to call elections in February 2019, and cleaning up corruption in the temples is percieved as a canny move that would play well to the electorate when they run as a political party.

Buddhism is one of the three pillars of Thailand, alongside the monarchy and the nation (90% of the country is Buddhist), and there is a widespread sense of disgust at the level of corruption and illegal activity that goes on in the temples orchestrated by the monks. Some of the temples generate millions in donations ever year, with donations actively encouraged as a way to bring worshippers good karma, and yet are subject to no external regulation on how the money is spent.

The junta’s past attempts to exert their authority over the temples have not proved successful. In February last year the junta raided the popular Dhammakaya Temple, looking for its spiritual leader Phra Dhammachayo on allegations he had embezzled £28m of temple donations. The temple’s well-known allegiances to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is despised by the military and was toppled in a military coup in 2006, was also perceived as a motive of the raid. However, Dhammachayo eluded arrest and there was a backlash against the military government for being too heavy handed in the raid, which saw 4,000 officers descend on the temple for three weeks.

“After the seige of the Dhammakaya temple, people really started to look askance at what the military was doing to the monks and question their motives, and it really did damage to Prayut’s reputation” said Chambers. “So these new arrests might be designed to give the military a more popular image and make people forget about the failed mission last year. And the monks they have arrested – with Buddha Issara as the exception – they already had a really corrupt reputation so are an easy target.”

After the failure of the Dhammakaya Temple siege, the junta announced last March it was was drafting a law which would significantly weaken the Sangha council. It has not presented it to parliament yet but these new arrests could be laying the groundwork for the legislation.

Perhaps the most surprising of all the recent arrests was Buddha Issara, who was formally stripped of his position as a monk and sent to Bangkok remand prison to await trial on charges of robbery, forgery, and illegal detention of officials during the protests in 2013 and 2014, prior to the coup.

Issara had in fact been a long advocate for reform in Buddhism and last August condemned the military junta for not acting on their promise to clean up the temples. “Are they still serious about tackling corruption or are they only moving against certain people and groups?” he said, adding that when it came to monks: “No one can touch them.”

The arrest of Issara has been perceived as a sign that either the junta fear he is too much of a loose canon politically or is that the junta are attempting to prove themselves as ethical, and deserving of political longevity, to the new Thai monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who inherited the throne last year.

Thailand has recently seen a rare upsurge in protests and demonstrations, and the arrests have also been seen as the junta giving the monks a strong signal of what will happen if they don’t toe the line politically, especially the large number who still have loyalty to the pro-Thaksin red-shirt movement. Investigations are still ongoing and it is thought there will be more arrests going forward.