Thai prosecutors indict ex-PM Yingluck over rice subsidy scheme

Friday, 20 February 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Former Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra is formally indicted over a bungled rice subsidy scheme in the latest legal move against her polarising family that could see her jailed for up to a decade (AFP) BANGKOK: Former Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra was formally indicted over a bungled rice subsidy scheme Thursday (19 February) in a move that could see her jailed for up to a decade. “Today we have indicted former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for dereliction of duty” in relation to the costly rice scheme, said Chutichai Sakhakorn, director-general of the special litigation department at the Office of the Attorney General. The Supreme Court will decide whether or not to accept the case on 19 March. Thailand’s junta-stacked government is also considering launching a civil suit against the nation’s first female prime minister to seek $ 18 billion in compensation for damages caused by the scheme. Yingluck, sister of fugitive former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, was retroactively impeached last month by an assembly appointed by the junta which seized power from her elected government last May. She 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 after rumours she might seek to flee the kingdom. “She will enter the justice process,” he told reporters ahead of the formal charges being laid out. 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 northeast it was economically disastrous, leading to massive stockpiles of the grain.