A large-scale investigation has been launched after it emerged that a businessman had fathered 16 children and planned to have many more.
 
Police raided a home in Bangkok in Thailand earlier this month, finding nine babies with nine different nannies.
 
24-year-old Mitsutoki Shigeta from Japan has been identified as the father of each of them, as well as seven more babies.
 
The children were housed in unfurnished rooms filled with baby bottles, bouncy chairs, playpens and nappies, said Thai police. 
 
"What I can tell you so far is that I've never seen a case like this," Thailand's Interpol director, police Maj Gen Apichart Suribunya, said.
 
"We are looking into two motives. One is human trafficking and the other is exploitation of children," said police Lit Gen Kokiat Wongvorachart, Thailand's lead investigator in what has been dubbed the 'Baby Factory' case. 
 
He said Shigeta had made 41 trips to Thailand since 2010. On many occasions he travelled to nearby Cambodia, where he brought four of his babies.
 
Police said Shigeta hired 11 Thai surrogate mothers to carry his children, including four sets of twins. Police have not yet determined the biological mothers. 
 
The founder of the New Life clinic, a multinational fertility clinic that provided Shigeta with two surrogate mothers, said she warned Interpol about him even before the first baby was born in June 2013. 
 
"As soon as they got pregnant, he requested more. He said he wanted 10 to 15 babies a year, and that he wanted to continue the baby-making process until he's dead," said Mariam Kukunashvili of New Life. 
 
She said Shigeta also asked about equipment to freeze his sperm to have sufficient supply when he was older.
 
She also said he told the clinic's manager that "he wanted to win elections and could use his big family for voting", and that "the best thing I can do for the world is to leave many children".
 
During the raid on the property, Shigeta's former lawyer Ratpratan Tulatorn insisted his client had done nothing wrong.
 
"These are legal babies, they all have birth certificates," he said. "There are assets purchased under these babies' names. There are savings accounts for these babies, and investments. If he were to sell these babies, why would he give them these benefits?"
 
The investigations continues. 
 

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