Bangkok  - Thailand's coup-ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra on Monday kicked off a "merit making" tour of 99 Buddhist sites in north-east and northern Thailand, a week before he was scheduled to appear in court to face corruption charges.

An estimated 2,000 supporters were at the airport to meet Thaksin in Khon Kaen, 370 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, where he visited two Buddhist temples, said The Nation online news service.

Thaksin, who was toppled by a military coup in September, 2006 and faces several corruption cases starting with a trial on April 29, is reportedly making the high-profile, merit-making tour to reverse his bad luck.

After Khon Kaen, he plans to visit temples and holy sites in Kalasin, Roi-et and Maha Sarakham before moving to the northern provinces. Thaksin, 58, and 110 executives of his now defunct Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) Party have been banned from politics for five years by a Constitutional Tribunal ruling in May, 2007.

After spending 17 months in self-exile, Thaksin returned to Thailand on February 28, to face charges that he abused his power in 2003 by allowing his wife to bid at a public auction for a plot of Bangkok property on Ratchadaphisek road that she paid 772 million baht (24.5 million dollars) for.

The Ratchadaphiset trial begins on April 29.

Thaksin, one of the most divisive political figures in Thailand's recent history, agreed to return to face corruption charges only after the People Power Party (PPP), an openly pro-Thaksin party, won the December 23 general election and formed a coalition government on February 6.

The PPP, which won 230 out of 400 contested seats at the polls, was particularly popular in the north-eastern and northern provinces.

Thaksin arguably transformed Thailand's political system of money politics by introducing populist policies to win votes, turning his elected government into a supreme state-patron for the poor, undermining the former system of provincial patronage. (dpa)