Former Thai minister under Yingluck gets 42 years in prison

Thailand's former commerce minister has been sentenced to 42 years in prison for falsifying a rice deal between the country and China, causing huge losses.

Boonsong Teriyapirom, former Thai commerce minister. Photo: Reuters.

"Boonsong was sentenced to 42 years in prison," Reuters quoted a Thai court judge as saying today.

The court found former Thai commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom guilty of falsifying rice deals between Thailand and China. According to Thailand's anti-corruption commission, the deals made by Boonsong caused "huge losses" to the country, with the rice only sold domestically and not exported.

Mr Boonsong was sentenced just hours after former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra failed to appear at the Supreme Court to hear a verdict in a case related to a rice subsidy program she launched in 2011.

Sources close to Yingluck said today that she has left Thailand. The Supreme Court has issued an arrest warrant for her.

Nathathorn Prousoontorn, director general of the Immigration Bureau, said this morning that there was no sign that Ms. Yingluck had left Thailand. He said that if Ms. Yingluck had traveled by private plane, the flight information would have appeared in the bureau’s database. However, if she had secretly crossed the border, the bureau would have no data.

Ms. Yingluck, the sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, is on trial for negligence in managing a rice subsidy program for farmers, causing losses to the state budget. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, up to $1 billion in compensation and a lifetime ban from politics.

According to VNE