A wealthy Japanese man has been granted sole parent rights to 13 children he fathered through Thai surrogate mothers, in a court ruling that paves the way for him to take them to Japan.
Mitsutoki Shigeta, 28, became the centre of a “baby factory” scandal in 2014 after Thai police linked him via DNA to nine infants found under the care of 24-hour nannies in a luxury Bangkok apartment.
The children were estimated to be between two weeks and two years old at the time and have since been cared for by the Thai state, while another four were later deemed also to have been fathered by him.
The extraordinary discovery threw a spotlight on the kingdom’s then-unregulated “rent-a-womb” industry, prompting authorities to bar foreigners in 2015 from paying for Thai surrogates.
Shigeta, reportedly the son of a Japanese IT tycoon, left the country in the wake of the scandal and has never directly explained why he fathered so many children.
He later took Thailand’s ministry of social development and human security to court to seek custody of the children.
On Tuesday, a Bangkok court granted him legal rights to take the children, saying he had ample money to care for them and had prepared nurses and nannies at a safe residence in Japan.
“For the happiness and opportunities the 13 children will receive from their biological father – who does not have a history of bad behaviour – the court rules them to be the plaintiff’s legal children,” the central juvenile court said in a statement that did not mention Shigeta by name for privacy reasons.
Shigeta, who did not attend the trial, was deemed “sole parent” of the children after the Thai surrogates had signed away their rights, the court added.
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