Move Forward party leader Pita Limjaroenrat said Tuesday that he has allocated 42,000 shares in the iTV company, inherited from his late father, to the other heirs, to pre-empt any attempt to revive the media company as political ammunition.
The embattled prime ministerial candidate is accused of holding a stake in a media company, in violation of the election law which forbids electoral candidates from owning a media firm or holding shares in such company, the penalty for which is disqualification.
In his Facebook post today (Tuesday), Pita claims that the shares he inherited do not have any economic value, after iTV was delisted from the Thai stock market by the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2014.
He also said that iTV is no longer a media company, after the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office revoked the contract with iTV to operate on the UHF TV spectrum on March 7th, 2007 and designated the Public Relations Department to operate on that spectrum instead. The licence was subsequently transferred to Thai PBS.
Pita claims that, in the 2022 balance sheet of iTV, which was submitted to the Department of Business Development for consideration, there was a suspicious change in the core business of iTV, from finance to TV and media advertising, despite the fact that iTV has ceased to be a media firm.
Due to these unusual occurrences, he said he decided to consult other heirs and decided to divide the shares among them, adding that the share transfer was not done with the intention to escape accountability.
The Move Forward party leader said that he is ready to defend himself to the Election Commission, regarding the iTV share controversy, without being distracted from his work.
