Somehow, Both Owners of Miss Universe Have Warrants Out for Their Arrest
The fate of Miss Universe is now tied up in cases involving fraud, trafficking, arrest warrants and allegations of pageant rigging.
Photo by Mohan Raj/Getty Images Splinter miss universe
Who would have thought that, a decade after serial woman-hater Donald Trump relieved himself of ownership of the Miss Universe pageant, the organization would somehow find itself more marked by corruption and legal jeopardy than ever before? It’s definitely saying something, to state that the iconic beauty pageant is somehow in more dire straits now in 2025 than it was in 2015 when run by a man later found liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll—and yet it can’t be denied. After all, Trump didn’t have a warrant out for his arrest during his Miss Universe days—he’d have to wait until 2023 in Georgia for that honor. Now, of the two people who currently split ownership of Miss Universe between them, both are wanted for entirely separate crimes, ranging from fraud to suspected involvement in drugs and weapon trafficking. Oh, and did we mention that the recently concluded 2025 pageant was also marked by verbal abuse, the serious injury of a competitor, and allegations of rigging from one of its own judges?
Truly, it is an incredible shitstorm of legal woes, potential criminality and jaw-dropping weirdness that surrounds the name “Miss Universe” as 2025 draws to a close. So let’s start by first explaining how the 2025 competition was almost derailed by scandal before its completion a few weeks ago.
Bullying and Accusations of Contest-Rigging
On Nov. 21, this year’s Miss Universe competition came to a close with the crowning of 25-year-old Fátima Bosch Fernández, Miss Mexico, as its winner. It was the culmination of a pageant cycle that been even more filled with intrigue and heightened emotion than usual–just two days earlier during the Miss Universe preliminaries, contestant Miss Jamaica, Dr. Gabrielle Henry, had been hospitalized after slipping and falling from the stage in a serious accident. Henry ultimately suffered an intercranial hemorrhage, fracture and facial lacerations, spending several days in the intensive care unit. And somehow, this will likely be just a footnote when it comes to this particular event.
Even before the win, Fátima Bosch Fernández had already been the biggest narrative of the pageant, thanks to an incident that occurred at the beginning of November after contestants arrived in host country Thailand. In a moment that was livestreamed by none other than hometown gal Miss Universe Thailand, businessman Nawat Itsaragrisil, an executive director of Miss Universe Organization, was caught angrily berating Fátima Bosch for an apparent failure to participate in some of the expected social media promotional shoots. Calling Fátima Bosch “dummy” and saying she had “no respect,” Itsaragrisil grew incensed when she dared to talk back to him in front of the many other assembled contestants, asking “why you still stand up to talk to me?”, to which Bosch in the video replies: “Because I have a voice. You are not respecting me as a woman.”
When Itsaragrisil went so far as to call for security, Fátima Bosch stormed from the room herself, prompting the supporting walkout of more than a dozen other contestants in solidarity, including current Miss Universe Victoria Kjær Theilvig of Denmark. Itsaragrisil continued to threaten those who remained, saying “Sit down, If anyone wants to continue the contest, sit down.” He was summarily “dismissed” from further participation in this year’s pageant, which is almost certainly a nice way of saying “we told him to take a break until the heat is off.”
Miss Universe 2025 explains how it felt to watch competitors rally around her amid pageant scandal
www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/w…
— Jake Tapper, long-suffering Philly sports fan (@jaketapper.bsky.social) Dec 4, 2025 at 7:19 PM
When Fátima Bosch Fernández went on to win the Miss Universe pageant on Nov. 21, some observers saw it as a fitting that Miss Mexico should be vindicated after enduring the slings of verbal abuse from one of the company’s executives in front of all of her peers. Others questioned the providence of the choice, asking if Bosch had been chosen as a sort of PR salve to make up for another high-profile example of the organization mistreating women. Those idle musings went out the window, however, when one of the pageant’s own judges, who resigned from his position mere days before the international competition, made explosive claims that the top 30 finalists had been chosen far in advance by an “impromptu jury,” before contestants from the 136 participating countries had even begun the preliminaries. Likewise, former judge and composer Omar Harfouch went on to claim that Fátima Bosch’s crown was also one of lies, saying that the win was “fake,” and that he had been pressured by Miss Universe owner Raúl Rocha of Mexico to vote for Fátima Bosch, because “Raúl Rocha is in business with Fátima Bosch’s father,” an executive at Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex. Per Harfouch in an Instagram post, he claimed the truth behind the contest rigging would be revealed in an upcoming HBO interview, giving the date of “May 2026.”
At the same time, two other expected judges for the competition–soccer player Claude Makélélé and Princess Camilla di Borbone delle Due Sicilie–also resigned from the judging panel following Harfouch’s exit. Neither gave definitive comment on why they had withdrawn. Fátima Bosch, meanwhile, responded to Harfouch’s accusations of a rigged contest with denials, saying that her critics had been conducting a “campaign of hate,” while the Miss Universe Organization unsurprisingly also denied Harfouch’s account of contest rigging in a statement of their own posted to Instagram, threatening the former judge with legal action if he continued “associating himself with any Miss Universe trademarks.”
Injured runway walkers, belittled competitors, and a winner’s conspiracy? That would be plenty of drama for Miss Universe, and we haven’t even gotten to the fact that authorities are hunting for both of the competition’s primary owners.
Beauty Pageant Fugitives
In 2015, the aforementioned Donald Trump sold the Miss Universe contest and brand to Endeavor Group. It was subsequently acquired in 2022 by Thailand’s JKN Global Group, which is owned and operated by Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip, a Thai media mogul who also now owns the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA beauty pageant organizations. More progressive fans of the pageants–whoever those might be–actually welcomed the news at the time, as Jakrajutatip, one of the world’s richest transgender persons, would become the first transgender woman to own and operate the organization, while moving its headquarters outside of the U.S. for the first time. Mexico’s Legacy Holding Group, led by businessman Raúl Rocha Cantú, then acquired a 50% stake in the Miss Universe Organization and the pageant from JKN Global Group in Jan. 2024, effectively splitting ownership down the middle between Jakrajutatip and Rocha Cantú. And wouldn’t you know it: These are the two who both appear to currently be fugitives from the law.
In Thailand, Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip has a warrant out for her arrest after failing to appear at a Bangkok court hearing in late November over a near $1 million legal dispute with a JKN Global investor. She was previously charged and released on bail in 2023 over the same case. She was notably absent from the Miss Universe competition in her home country in November.
According to Thai media sources, Jakrajutatip’s whereabouts are unknown, but it seems increasingly likely that the financial woes of JKN Global are at the root of her activity. The company reportedly began to default on payments to investors in 2023, filed for rehabilitation at a Thai bankruptcy court last year, and owes creditors upward of $92 million, according to the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. In 2025, the company was sanctioned and fined again by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand for having published “false or misleading information” in its financial statements, to the tune of another $124,000. It may be that these debts drove the sale of half of the Miss Universe Organization to Mexico’s Raúl Rocha Cantu and Legacy Holding Group, but it seems they found a buyer who is in even more legal hot water than Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip.
Miss Universe beauty pageant hit by fresh scandal days after it ended, with the Mexican co-owner of the contest accused of trafficking drugs and arms and his Thai counterpart accused of fraud
u.afp.com/Shdg
— AFP News Agency (@en.afp.com) Nov 26, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Just this week, the Mexican government’s anti-money laundering office announced that it was freezing the bank accounts of Rocha Cantú, as part of an ongoing investigation into drugs, weapons and fuel trafficking. The businessman has been under investigation since the end of 2024 for ties to alleged organized crime organizations, but had so far avoided federal accusations of direct culpability. Last month, a Mexican federal judge issued 13 arrest warrants for various figures in the case, including Rocha Cantú. According to Mexican newspaper Reforma, members of the criminal network possess “connections with politicians and authorities at all three levels of government to deliberately carry out their mission, which includes the sale of hydrocarbons, narcotics, and the trafficking and sale of large quantities of weapons of war.”
And if a whistleblower like former judge Omar Harfouch is to believed, said criminals also possessed … the influence to decide the outcome of an influential beauty pageant! You can’t deny the rather odd coincidence that, even as Mexican authorities were encircling Miss Universe Organization owner co-owner Rocha Cantú and his associates, the competition was simultaneously selecting Miss Mexico as its winner, of the 136 participating contestants. That’s a rather compelling coincidence, but no one said that rising to the top of the pageant world was going to be a cake walk.
Where does this leave the embattled competition? If both Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip and Raúl Rocha Cantú end up in prison, will the Miss Universe Organization even be able to fund the 2026 competition, which would be the 75th anniversary? Will contestants want to participate, given the incredible deluge of negative publicity and the accusations of rigging?
While we’re making suggestions: Given that the law doesn’t apply to the rich and powerful in the U.S., perhaps Donald Trump wants to take the competition back? At least then we wouldn’t have to question whether it was rife with corruption.
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