The Supreme Administrative Court ordered former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra today to pay the Finance Ministry about Bt10bn in compensation, for the losses caused to the state by her government’s controversial rice pledging scheme.
The amount is significantly lower than the Finance Ministry’s original demand of Bt35.7bn.
The Court stated that the ordered compensation equaled half the estimated loss from G2G rice sales under the scheme.
It added that Yingluck had shown grave negligence in supervising the scheme that allowed officials to engage in corruption, leading to the country’s massive loss.
Today’s ruling overturned an earlier decision by the Central Administrative Court, which held that the Finance Ministry’s complaint demanding Bt35.7 billion from Yingluck was unlawful and unfair.
This marks another setback for Yingluck, who left Thailand in August 2017 just as the court was about to rule on charges of negligence related to the rice-buying scheme.
On April 1, the Central Administrative Court overturned the Finance Ministry’s order, demanding she pay Bt35.7 bn in compensation for partial losses incurred, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Yingluck was directly responsible for the damage caused by the rice pledging scheme.
The Bt35.7bn compensation demand constituted 20% of the estimated Bt178-billion total losses incurred by scheme.
The court also cleared Yingluck of negligence, arguing that her government had taken measures to prevent irregularities in the scheme.
It pointed to a lack of proof that she had issued instructions for, or was directly involved in the bogus sales and revoked a separate administrative order for the confiscation of her assets.
The Finance Ministry appealed the lower court’s ruling to the Supreme Administrative Court.
In its ruling today, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Yingluck should be held accountable for half of the losses incurred in the course of the sale of the rice under the G-to-G deal, amounting to about Bt10bn, because she was the chair of the National Rice Policy Committee.
The court found her guilty of gross negligence, in her capacity as prime minister and chair of the National Rice Policy Committee, for not heeding the recommendations from the State Audit Office, that the rice pledging scheme should be scrapped.
Yingluck should have closely monitored the scheme, once she learned that financial damage had occurred.
However she didn’t, resulting in massive amounts of rice being left unsold, kept in warehouses until it rotted, according to the ruling today.
The court did, however, spare her any accountability for the annual rice pledging scheme, reasoning that it was the responsibility of bureaucrats.
