A British journalist with the BBC could face up to five years in a Thai jail after a lawyer brought a criminal defamation case against him over an investigation into fraud on a popular tourist island.

Rights groups say the case exposes how Thailand’s defamation and computer crime laws scupper investigative journalism and make it difficult to expose wrongdoing in an endemically corrupt country.

In 2015 the BBC’s south-east Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, reported on how two foreign retirees had been scammed out of their properties in Phuket.

On Thursday Head appeared in court in Phuket alongside one of the retirees, Ian Rance, a British national, who is a joint defendant in the prosecution. Both pleaded not guilty.

Both have had to surrender their passports to the court, leaving Head unable to work across Asia as he fights what could be a two-year court battle.

The prosecution was brought by Pratuan Thanarak, a Phuket lawyer who featured in Head’s report.

Rance retired to Phuket in 2001, married a local woman with whom he had three children, and bought nearly £1m worth of properties.

Under Thai law, foreigners cannot own land, but many get around that by placing properties in the name of a company they own or with locals they trust.

In 2010 Rance discovered that his wife had forged his signature to remove him as director and sell the properties with the help of a network of money lenders and property agents on the island. She was jailed for four years over the scam and he has been fighting through the courts for years to get the properties back.

The BBC’s Head reported that the lawyer Pratuan had admitted notarising Rance’s signature without him being present.

Pratuan filed a defamation case alleging the report caused him to be “defamed, insulted or hated”.

Rance and Head face one charge of criminal defamation, which carries up to two years in jail, and Head faces an additional charge under Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act, which has a five-year maximum penalty.

The BBC said it stood by its journalism and intended to clear Head’s name. Pratuan did not respond to requests for comment.

Unlike in most countries, where defamation is a civil crime, in Thailand it is a criminal offence. Private citizens can launch their own cases and they do not have to pay costs if they lose.



Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, said the case against Head and Rance showed “exactly why having criminal defamation laws is such a bad idea”. He said it meant powerful people could “engage in a game of legal blood sport by dragging people through the Thai court system”.

