Ex-premier’s bank blackout

– Thai authorities have frozen seven bank accounts belonging to ex-premier Yingluck Shinawatra over a $1 billion fine she faces for her administration’s controversial rice subsidy scheme, her lawyer said yesterday.

The move is seen as unprecedented because it financially sanctions an elected leader for a government policy and it is the latest in a barrage of legal battles she has had to fight since she was booted from office.

Thailand’s first female prime minister, whose government was toppled in a 2014 coup, is already facing up to a decade in jail for allegedly failing to stop graft in the subsidy programme that targeted her party’s rural farming base.

She was also retroactively impeached soon after the coup, a move that banned her from politics for five years.

Yingluck’s legal team had petitioned for an injunction against the $1 billion fine – which dwarfs the roughly $18 million she has in publicly declared assets.

But the finance ministry said on Monday it was moving ahead with the order and planned to seize 12 accounts belonging to the embattled politician. –