Model claiming Trump secrets to be deported after Thai trial

A Belarusian model who claimed she had proof of Russian efforts to help Donald Trump win office was set to be deported after being convicted Tuesday nearly a year after her arrest in Thailand for participating in a "sex training course".

Anastasia Vashukevich, known by her pen name Nastya Rybka, has been held with several others since a police raid in the sleazy seaside resort of Pattaya last February.

She had travelled to Thailand after becoming embroiled in a political scandal with Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a one-time associate of US President Trump's disgraced former campaign director Paul Manafort.

She set off a scramble for details after promising to reveal "missing puzzle pieces" regarding claims the Kremlin aided Trump's 2016 election victory.

But the material never surfaced and critics dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

The Pattaya Provincial Court convicted her and seven co-defendants after they suddenly pleaded guilty to multiple charges including solicitation and illegal assembly.

"The court found them all guilty of soliciting sex," said a judge on the panel, handing them three-year sentences and $6,000 fines but reducing the sentences to time served.

"The court releases them today," the judge added.

Thai immigration chief Surachate Hakparn said they would be transferred to an immigration detention centre in Bangkok and deported.

"The next step, I will coordinate with the Russian government for their deportation, which will likely take one week for all the processes to complete," Surachate told AFP.

"They are blacklisted from Thailand permanently for conducting bad deeds."