Thailand junta indicts Yingluck Shinawatra over rice subsidy scheme
|
Version 0 of 1. Thailand’s attorney general has pressed criminal charges against former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, alleging negligence related to her government’s rice subsidy scheme. The expected charge is the latest move initiated by the junta-led government against her polarising family and could see her jailed for up to a decade. Thailand’s regime is also considering launching a civil suit against the nation’s first female prime minister to seek $18bn in compensation for damages caused by the scheme. The prosecutors’ office on Thursday submitted 20 boxes of the case’s documents to the supreme court’s criminal division for politicians. They accused Yingluck of dereliction in overseeing a rice subsidy scheme that lost billions of dollars and temporarily cost Thailand its crown as the world’s top rice exporter. The move is widely seen as an attempt to cripple the political machine of Yingluck’s brother, the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra – who was ousted in a 2006 coup – and to prevent his allies from returning to power. It came one month after Yingluck was impeached on similar grounds by the military-appointed legislature and banned from politics for five years. Yingluck has been banned from leaving the country since authorities announced she would face criminal charges over the populist scheme on the same day she was impeached, a move carrying an automatic five-year ban from politics. Yingluck did not attend the indictment at Bangkok’s supreme court on Thursday but her lawyer Norawit Larlaeng said she had no plans to travel overseas. “She will enter the justice process,” he said. The ex-premier has defended the rice scheme as a necessary subsidy to help poor farmers who historically receive a disproportionately small slice of government cash. But while popular among the Shinawatras’ vote base in Thailand’s rural heartlands in the north and north-east, it was economically disastrous, leading to massive stockpiles. On Wednesday the finance minister, Sommai Phasee, said his ministry had received a letter from the national graft agency asking it to pursue a civil suit against Yingluck to recover losses of $18bn as a result of the scheme. “The finance ministry oversees damages to the state and is ready to take action,” he said. The subsidy, which paid farmers in the rural Shinawatra heartland twice the market rate for their crop, cost billions of dollars and inspired protests that felled Yingluck’s government and led to a military takeover on 22 May 2014. Experts say the impeachment and criminal charges are the latest attempt by the country’s royalist elite, and its army backers, to extinguish the political influence of the Shinawatras, whose parties have won every election since 2001. The clan draws the loyalty of urban working-class voters and farmers from the north and north-east, who applaud the family for recognising their changing social and economic aspirations. Since seizing power Thailand’s military has banned political gatherings, censored the media, arrested and detained opponents and ramped up prosecution under the country’s controversial lese majeste laws. The junta says it will hold fresh elections in early 2016 once reforms to tackle corruption and curb the power of political parties are codified in a new constitution. Thaksin, a policeman-turned-billionaire telecoms tycoon and premier who was ousted in a 2006 coup, has been in self-exile since 2008 to avoid being jailed for corruption. |