Thai Supreme Court to rule on seizure of former PM Taksin's tainted millions

[upi402]

Source: The Nation, Thailand

The nine judges started reading the verdict by outlining the prosecution case at 1:30 pm Friday.

The high court began by outlining the prosecution argument detailing Thaksin's equity structure in Shin Corp. The prosecution contended equity structure was designed to conceal true ownership.

__________________________________________________


Read more: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Verdict-reading-begin-30123525.html

---

Former Prime Minister Taksin is on the run and faces 2 years in prison if he returns to Thailand. A mildly treated back-story from CNN here;
"In 2008 he was found guilty and sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for a land deal that enabled his wife to buy a valuable city plot for a fraction of its true value.

The case currently being considered by the Supreme Court relates to the transfer of shares in his communications company Shin Corporation. The prosecution alleges he illegally transferred the shares to his family, who then sold them to the Singapore government's Temasek without paying tax.

The court will also rule on whether Thaksin's government implemented policies that benefited his businesses, including a low interest loan from the Thai government to the Myanmar government to buy equipment from Shin Corp, a change in tax laws that benefited Shin Corp and changes to satellite laws that helped Shin Corp."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/25/thailand.thaksin.shinawatra.explainer/

[upi402]

1. Graft is illegal in developing nations. But here???

In a historic anti-graft case, the majority of Thailand's nine Supreme Court judges yesterday voted to confiscate Bt46.37 billion worth of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's assets out of the total Bt76.6 billion.

The Bt46.37 billion are in 35 bank accounts and unit trusts frozen by the state.

However, the rest of Bt30.24-billion assets would be returned because they belonged to the former premier and his family before taking the public office in 2001.

Yet, Bt12 billion of this Bt30.24 billion is likely to remain frozen because of back taxes levied by the Revenue Department.

All nine judges yesterday spent seven hours and 20 minutes taking turn to read the lengthy landmark verdict.

The judges voted unanimously that the fugitive ex-premier had illegally concealed his massive wealth during his two terms of public office.

Then, the majority of judges ruled that Thaksin had abused his authority on several counts to benefit his family-owned Shin Corp and its subsidiaries, resulting in a massive public damage.

The verdict clearly states that more than half of the entire Bt76.6 billion assets frozen by the state following the Sept 19 2006 coup were ill-gotten.

Yet, the judges agreed that Bt30.24 billion of the entire amount belonged to Thaksin and his family before the former assumed the first term of public office on Feb 7, 2001.

Prior to that date, the court found that the price of Shin Corp's stock was Bt213.09 per share. Since the stock's par value was back then Bt10 per share (compared to today's Bt1 following a share split), the stock price should then be around Bt21.30 per share.

Given the fact that Thaksin and his family held a total of 1.41 billion shares, the combined value of their holdings was then Bt30.2 billion.

In the judges' opinion, it would be unfair to confiscate this amount.

Regarding the Bt46.37 billion confiscated by the state, the majority of judges ruled that this lawsuit as filed by the Office of Attorney-General is centred on the allegations that a former public office holder had amassed his wealth illegally while in office.

Therefore, the judges voted to confiscate about Bt6 billion worth of dividends from the massive stockholdings since this amount represented gains resulting from abuses of the public office.

The judges also voted to confiscate the remainder of money resulting from the sales of all 1.41 billion shares to Temasek Holdings of Singapore -- after deducting the Bt30.2-billion portion owned by Thaksin and his family before the start of the former's public office.

On abuses of the public office, the judges ruled that Thaksin had clearly executed government policies to benefit Advance Info Service (AIS), the flagship of Shin Corp.

The pre-paid mobile phone concession contract between state-owned TOT and AIS was amended, with the revenue-sharing percentage reduced from 25 per cent to only 20 per cent, resulting in a state damage estimated to be Bt70 billion.

Secondly, the state-owned TOT was damaged when telecom roaming charges were deducted from concession fees, even though AIS was not the direct beneficiary at the time.

Third, the judges ruled the amendments to the concession contract between the transport ministry and Shin Sat, another unit of Shin Corp, had clearly benefited the latter.

Originally, Shin Sat was supposed to send Thaicom 4, a back-up satellite, into orbit, according to the concession contract.

However, this was later changed so that Shin Sat could switch to send IP Star, a different type of commercial satellite, into orbit.

Fourth, the judges ruled that Shin Sat had also clearly benefited from Thaksin's verbal order for the Foreign Ministry and state-owned Exim Bank to provide a Bt4-billion loan to the government of Myanmar.

The loan was used to buy equipment and satellite services from Shin Sat while the Finance Ministry later on had to set aside a budget to subsidise the low-interest loan.


-- The Nation 2010-02-27

[Imajika]

2. I lived in Thailand when Thaksin was elected...

There really is a lot more to this story. I still have all the stickers of Thaksin's ticket number the cab drivers were handing out to anyone who was interested.

Not sure anyone is much interested in Thai politics, but I can comment a little about what I've seen.

Despite the court ruling here, if Thaksin could return to Thailand the rural poor (the majority) would vote him right back in to power.

He does seem to have been quite a crook, but he advocated social policies such as the 30 baht doctor's visits, micro loans for poor people, etc, that most rural and poorer people favored.

While a bad comparison, Thaksin was sort of Thailand's version of maybe someone like Mel Zelaya. He is too rich to be compared to people like Chavez or Morales. The problem here is that Thaksin does indeed appear to have been pretty corrupt. His policies however are still very popular with the poor, and it is a shame someone like Thaksin became the person to represent them because it probably set back the goals of the majority poor by decades.

The Red Shirts are what remains of Thaksin's advocates (again, mostly rural poor who turn out in Bangkok to protest on his behalf). The Yellow Shirts are mostly represented by the middle, upper and business class that don't want any changes since the current system benefits them just fine.

This ruling probably means Thaksin can never return, which is probably a good thing, but very sad how it all worked out.