Bangkok court gives Japanese man who lived in Hong Kong custody of 13 children born to Thai surrogate mothers
The ruling stated that Mitsutoki Shigeta, the son of an IT tycoon, has ample money to take them and has prepared nurses and nannies to care for them
A wealthy Japanese man was on Tuesday 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 custody of them in Japan.
Mitsutoki Shigeta, 28, was living in Hong Kong in 2014 when he became the centre of a “baby factory” scandal, after Thai police found a plush Bangkok flat packed with infants under the care of 24-hour nannies.
An investigation later found he had fathered 19 children in total, 13 surrogate babies living in Thailand and six others living in Cambodia and Japan, according to an official from Thailand’s Social Development and Welfare Department.
Four of the six children living in Cambodia and Japan were from Thai surrogates.
Shigeta’s bizarre case threw a spotlight on the kingdom’s 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.