Thai Court orders ex-premier Yingluck to pay US$306 million fine

[BANGKOK] A Thai court ordered former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to pay a US$306 million fine for losses incurred under her administration’s controversial rice purchase programme over a decade ago, according to local media reports.

The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Yingluck, who is Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s aunt, must pay the penalty because her carelessness had caused the state financial damages, Thai-language newspaper Khaosod reported on Thursday (May 22). The ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed, overturned a lower court’s verdict from 2021. 

Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a coup exactly 10 years ago, was originally ordered by the Ministry of Finance in 2016 to pay a penalty of 35.7 billion baht (S$1.40 billion) for her role in the rice-pledging scheme. She filed a lawsuit against the ministry, and called for fairness from then-junta leader Prayuth Chan-Ocha, who denied any bias in the prosecution. 

Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party won a general election in 2011 in part by appealing to millions of rice farmers with the plan to buy crops at inflated prices. She said the programme would help reduce inequality, while her opponents say it encouraged corruption. The damages sought were a fraction of the 178 billion baht that the rice-pledging programme was estimated to cost the country in 2012 and 2013. 

The former leader fled Thailand in 2017 just before a court hearing in another case related to the rice scheme. She was found guilty in absentia and sentenced to five years in prison for criminal negligence. 

Yingluck remains in exile. But her potential return to Thailand has been a subject of interest after her older brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, returned to Thailand in 2023 following a 15-year exile. Thaksin served a small portion of his original eight-year jail term over corruption in a Bangkok hospital before walking free. BLOOMBERG