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- Miss Universe CEO Anne Jakrajutatip has been accused of trying to favor Miss Thailand in the 2023 Miss Universe competition.
- A former Miss Universe judge told Business Insider Jakrajutatip told then-president Paula Shugart to put Thailand in the top five.
- Shugart resigned from the Miss Universe Organization during the 2023 competition.
In 2023, on the eve of the Miss Universe finals in El Salvador, Paula Shugart announced the end of her 23-year tenure as the president of the Miss Universe Organization. Her resignation was met with shock and gasps from the thousands of pageant fans in the stands.
However, Denise White, one of the judges for the November 2023 competition, wasn’t surprised. White told Business Insider that Miss Universe CEO Anne Jakrajutatip tried to pressure Shugart to favor Miss Thailand in the pageant, wanting the contestant to make the top five during the competition.
Jakrajutatip and her Thailand-based company, JKN Global, bought the Miss Universe organization for $20 million in October 2022.
“I really can’t comment at this time in light of my ongoing litigation against Anne in Thailand,” Shugart said when BI reached out to her for comment, noting that she has a criminal complaint against Jakrajutatip for defamation in Thailand court. “However, there is nothing I have seen in Denise’s comments that I would refute.”
According to ABC News, Jakrajutatip denied any wrongdoing in Shugart’s complaint against her.
Representatives for Jakrajutatip and the Miss Universe Organization did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
“She said, ‘I can’t believe Anne is telling me that, no matter what, we have to make sure Thailand is in the top five,'” White said, recalling her conversation with Shugart. White added that Shugart refused to comply with Jakrajutatip’s request, although Thailand’s contestant was selected as the first runner-up in the end on her own accord.
Voting ‘above board’
White, a former Miss Oregon who competed at Miss USA in 1994, specializes in crisis management for high-profile athletes and celebrities. After judging Miss USA 2018, she reconnected with Shugart and was hired as a consultant for the organization in 2022.
The Miss Universe Organization has historically had no say in who makes it to the top five. Still, the organization has helped select the semi-finalists for the pageant for nearly 20 years, a fact that was well-known to the contestants.
In a 2018 New Yorker article, Miss Canada 2012 Adwoa Yamoah told the magazine that Donald Trump — who owned the Miss Universe Organization, including Miss USA, from 1996 to 2015 — “basically told us he picked nine of the top 15.”
However, according to one longtime Miss USA employee, the organization had zero input on the results once the preliminary competition was over and the top 15 contestants were announced on live TV.
Each year’s televised final featured a different group of judges — often celebrities, models, and past Miss Universe winners — who would rank the contestants based on their performance in the swimsuit, evening gown, and interview rounds. Their votes were always audited by the accounting firm Ernst & Young.
“The judges made the decision, and Ernst & Young would sign off on it,” said the Miss USA employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “Ernst & Young was very proud that it was above board.”
A different former Miss Universe employee, who also asked to remain anonymous, confirmed that the Miss Universe 2023 pageant was audited by Ernst & Young but that the organization’s partnership with the accounting first did not continue in 2024.
The source said that current Miss Universe President Raul Rocha publicly announced Miss Universe 2024 would be audited by Deloitte but decided to let the company go a month before the competition in Mexico — opting for a local accountant instead.
‘Why not Thailand?’
Miss Thailand 2023 Anntonia Porsild won first-runner up at the competition, losing the 2023 Miss Universe crown to Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios.
“I judged Thailand harder because I didn’t like that Anne was trying to push Paula to somehow tell us,” said White. “And nobody knew about this except me; the other judges had no idea this was going on.”
White said Porsild earned first runner-up fair and square. “She totally got it above board. She got this off her own volition,” White added.
Representatives for Palacios and Prosild did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Multiple sources who worked at Miss Universe and were present at the 2023 pageant told BI that Jakrajutatip was unsatisfied with the results despite Thailand making the top five.
One source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, recalled the CEO saying, “Why not Thailand?” just moments after the winner was announced.
By then, Shugart had already resigned. White said she advised Shugart to make a public speech during the competition.
“I said, ‘What you’ve been asked to compromise, and the things happening behind the scenes, is not OK,'” White recalled telling Shugart.
When Shugart gave her surprise resignation speech the night before the finalists were announced, she told the crowd of pageant fans: “There is a critical difference between declaring the words ‘transformational leadership’ and being a real transformational leader.”
“It can and it must be empathetic beyond self-interest,” Shugart said. “It can and it must be committed to building confidence through inspiration and teamwork, not insecurity and chaos.”
“Above all, it must be about honesty, respect, integrity, and living by your word,” she added. “One cannot just talk the talk. One must walk the walk.”
A scandal-plagued organization
In January 2023, four months after Jakrajutatip acquired the Miss Universe brand, she gave a rousing speech during the Miss Universe finals in New Orleans, promising to usher in a new era.
“From now on, it’s going to be run by women, owned by a trans woman, for all women around the world,” Jakrajutatip said.
That same year, married women and mothers walked the Miss Universe stage for the first time in its history. In 2024, all women over the age of 18 were allowed to compete. Many hailed the organization as a champion for diversity.
Months later, in an October 2023 video obtained by BI, Jakrajutatip told her staff that diverse pageant contestants “can compete, but they can’t win,” calling it a “communication strategy.”
In a statement later posted to her Facebook page, Jakrajutatip said she was discussing a potential Miss Universe reality show rather than the competition.
In October 2024, Jakrajutatip shocked pageant fans when she went on Instagram Live and began judging the photos of the Miss Universe contestants, laughing and appearing to grimace at some of the women’s pictures.
The following month, she made headlines once again after praising the blond hair and blue eyes of Miss Universe 2024 winner Victoria Kjaer Theilvig. When a reporter asked Jakrajutatip about the evolution of the Miss Universe pageant, the CEO said, “We already got the best here.”
“We have blond and blue eyes, so we’re coming to the ultimate evolution already,” Jakrajutatip said. “We don’t need any more evolution here.”
White told BI she believes Shugart’s resignation was the demise of the Miss Universe Organization.
“I told Paula, ‘Sometimes you have to watch something burn to save it,'” White recalled. “But after this burns, I don’t know if there’s any saving it.”
“Once people cannot trust that this is a fair competition or a fair organization, most people don’t want to be a part of it,” she added. “If people think there’s no fairness and equity in it and it’s rigged, that thing is destined to fail.”
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