Former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra was yesterday indicted over a bungled rice subsidy scheme in the latest legal move against her family that could see her jailed for up to a decade.
Thailand’s junta-stacked government is also considering launching a civil suit against Yingluck to seek US$18 billion in compensation for damages caused by the scheme introduced by her government.
The indictment comes after Yingluck was retroactively impeached last month by an assembly appointed by the junta that seized power from her elected government in May last year.
Photo: EPA
“We have indicted former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra ... for dereliction of duty” in relation to the costly rice scheme, said Chutichai Sakhakorn, a director-general at Thailand’s attorney general’s office, which filed the criminal charges.
The Thai Supreme Court is to decide whether to accept the case on March 19.
Yingluck did not attend the indictment hearing at Bangkok’s Supreme Court, but her lawyer Norawit Larlaeng said she had no plans to travel overseas amid rumors she might seek to flee the kingdom.
“She will enter the justice process,” he told reporters just before the formal charges were laid out.
Yingluck’s brother, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has been in self-exile since 2008 to avoid being jailed for corruption after he was ousted in a 2006 coup.
Yingluck has defended the rice scheme as a necessary subsidy to help poor farmers, but it was economically disastrous and led to massive stockpiles of the grain.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
CHINA’s BULLYING: The former British prime minister said that he believes ‘Taiwan can and will’ protect its freedom and democracy, as its people are lovers of liberty Former British prime minister Boris Johnson yesterday said Western nations should have the courage to stand with and deepen their economic partnerships with Taiwan in the face of China’s intensified pressure. He made the remarks at the ninth Ketagalan Forum: 2025 Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prospect Foundation in Taipei. Johnson, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time, said he had seen Taiwan’s coastline on a screen on his indoor bicycle, but wanted to learn more about the nation, including its artificial intelligence (AI) development, the key technology of the 21st century. Calling himself an
South Korea yesterday said that it was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to North Korea, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbor. The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean residents, a day after South Korea’s loudspeakers fell silent. “Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,”
RSS