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By APD writer Chen Jiabao
BANGKOK, Sept.27 (APD) -- Thailand's Supreme Court on Wednesday found ex-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra guilty of malfeasance in a loss-ridden rice subsidy program and sentenced her in absentia to five years in jail.
Yingluck has so far not made any public comments on the reading.
After a trial running over two years , the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions began reading the verdict at 11 a.m and continued for nearly four hours.
In an announcement released by the court, it read that even though the unmilled rice pledging programs was an act according to government policy that the cabinet had stated to National Assembly, if the implementation of such policy was not according with the law, such act could be inspected by the judicial process.
The court judges that the defendant, a person holding political position of dereliction of duty.
Yingluck could be sentenced to as much as 10 years in prison if found guilty of negligence over a costly rice subsidy scheme that helped to bring her to power in an election in 2011.
In the scheme, Yingluck's government paid Thai rice farmers inflated prices for their crops, drive up global rice prices by hoarding the grain, and aimed to resell the rice at higher prices.
The subsidy scheme didn't work, costing the country 8 billion U.S. dollars and leaving it with vast stockpiles of rice.
Yingluck denied all the charges, arguing she was not responsible for the day-to-day running of the scheme and insisted she was a victim of political persecution.
The verdict was supposed to be read on Aug. 25. But Yingluck, the country's first woman prime minister, failed to show up, stunning thousands of her supporters who had gathered outside the court.
Her lawyer said she was ill with an ear problem and could not appear in court. The court then issued an arrest warrant on her and postponed the verdict.
It's reported that she fled to Dubai where her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, lives in self-imposed exile avoiding a 2008 sentence for corruption.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said on Tuesday that he knows where the ousted former prime minister is but will not disclose her whereabouts until the verdict is delivered.
(REUTERS)
