By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE SUPREME ADMINISTRATIVE COURT today (May 22) passed judgment to overrule the Central Administrative Court’s earlier verdict for fugitive former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and finally gave an order for her to pay compensation in cash for damage done in a previous Pheu Thai government’s graft-infested rice subsidy scheme.
The Supreme Administrative Court has delivered the final ruling in absentia of the defendant Yingluck, sister of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, that she be legally obliged to pay a sum of 10.02 billion baht in cash to compensate part of the enormous financial losses which her coup-deposed government’s corruption-riddled rice subsidy project had caused at the expense of the taxpayers’ money over a decade earlier.
That latest verdict of the Supreme Administrative Court for the fugitive Yingluck significantly overruled the one previously handed by the relatively lower-ranking Central Administrative Court to exonerate her from being legally bound to pay a sum of 35.71 billion baht in compensation for damage incurred to the loss-ridden rice project and commuted it to 10.02 billion baht.
Yingluck had been earlier found guilty of duty negligence charges pertaining to the scandalous subsidy scheme in a separate, criminal lawsuit and sentenced by court to a five-year term in prison.
Thaksin, father of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, had earlier announced in public that his youngest sister would have returned home from self-exile abroad to mingle with people during last month’s Songkran festival in their home province of Chiang Mai but the former prime minister who had fled the country since 2017 has failed to show up as yet.
Nevertheless, the mega-billionaire, de facto Pheu Thai boss is more or less anticipated to find legal loopholes and leeways to bring the fugitive Yingluck home without being subsequently thrown behind bars following suit of himself manipulating to literally stay away from jail upon his return from self-exile overseas in 2023.
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Top and Front Page: Former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Photos: Thai Rath
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