Yingluck to fight RM4b fine over rice scheme
BANGKOK: Thailand’s ousted prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra said the junta that overthrew her has ordered her assets seized and fined her 35 billion baht (RM4.2 billion) over a rice subsidy scheme critics say haemorrhaged billions of dollars.
The scheme, which paid farmers above market rates for their rice, was a flagship policy of Yingluck’s administration and helped sweep her to office in 2011.
After her 2014 overthrow, she was charged with criminal negligence over the scheme and is now fighting the charges in court.
Yingluck said here yesterday that she had received a notice two days ago ordering her assets to be seized.
“In terms of the order, it is not right and it is not just,” she said.
“I will use every channel available to fight this.”
The rice subsidy scheme was a populist policy engineered by Yingluck’s brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 coup.
Her supporters said the case against Yingluck was part of a military plan to wipe out the influence of the Shinawatra family. The junta denies it is singling Yingluck out.
In addition to cases against Yingluck and senior members of her former cabinet, the junta is investigating 850 cases related to the rice scheme for graft, government spokesman General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.
Many of the cases involve lower ranking public officials and members of the private sector, he said.
An advisor to Yingluck, who declined to be named, said that the asset seizure was done using section 44 of the interim constitution which gives junta chief Prayuth Chan o cha, who is also the country’s prime minister, absolute power to give any order deemed necessary to “strengthen public unity and harmony”. Reuters