Off the wire
• 1st LD: UN chief to visit Kaesong industrial complex in DPRK  • (Recast) Chinese e-commerce giant launches one-stop online shop for S. Korean goods  • Sudan denies accusations that it backs rebels in South Sudan  • China treasury bond futures close lower Tuesday  • Hong Kong stocks close up Tuesday  • 1st LD: Bicycle bomb wounds 4 police in S. Afghanistan  • Trading on Hong Kong Stock Exchange  • Mazda recall over fuel leak risk  • Luxembourg bank starts asset management business in HK  • Context favorable for restoring Cuba-U.S. diplomatic ties: official official  
You are here: 　 Home

Roundup: Yingluck Shinawatra attends Thai supreme court's first hearing on rice scandal

Xinhua, May 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

undup: Yingluck Shinawatra attends Thai supreme court's first hearing on rice scandal

BANGKOK, May 19 (Xinhua) - Former Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra appeared in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, dismissing duty-negligence charges which had allegedly incurred an enormous financial loss in a previous government's rice subsidy program.

Yingluck, sister of former Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra who has remained in exile since 2006, attended the first hearing on the historic lawsuit in which she categorically denied that she had allegedly failed to fight corruption over the rice program implemented by her Pheu Thai (for Thais) Party-led government during the past few years.

The allegations launched by the National Anti-Corruption Commission was read out in the court during the first hearing while Yingluck was obviously reserved and calm.

Moments earlier in the compound of the court, she called on members of the public to refrain from criticizing the lawsuit now that it is currently handled by the Supreme Court.

The former lady leader was released under bail worth about one million U.S. dollars on condition that she be strictly prohibited from leaving the country pending court proceedings on the case which might possibly put her in jail if finally found guilty as charged.

Yingluck earlier vowed to not evade the lawsuit simply by slipping out of the country though her globetrotting brother did several years ago, following the Supreme Court's verdict on a Bangkok land grab scandal which finally found him guilty and delivered him a two-years jail term.

Given a verbal testimony to dismiss the duty-negligence charges, Yingluck was obliged to submit her bona fide in defense of herself to the Supreme Court judges in charge of lawsuits against politicians on July 3.

The loss of about 20 billion U.S. dollars in the taxpayer's money due to the alleged graft already landed the former lady leader an impeachment by the National Legislative Assembly which resulted in a five-year political ban.

Hundreds of people showed up to give morale support to the deposed premier as she arrived in the compound of the Supreme Court.

She earlier maintained that she had taken steps to contain alleged corruption over the rice program under which farmers nationwide had been given an average of 500 U.S. dollars for each ton of their rice.

In a separate lawsuit, former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyabhirom and former deputy commerce minister Poom Sarapol plus a former head of the Foreign Trade Department are yet to undergo court trials for the same rice program.

The NACC had alleged that the former cabinet members had been involved in a trading scam in which hundreds of thousands of tons of rice had been sold under a government-to-government dealing but wound up in the hands of profiteering traders.

They were already impeached by the legislative body, all members of which were handpicked by Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha, the former army chief who led the May, 2014 coup to oust the Yingluck government. Endi