The Supreme Administrative Court has ordered fugitive former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to pay 10 billion baht in compensation for the losses incurred by her administration's rice-pledging scheme more than a decade ago.
The ruling, issued on Thursday in Bangkok, upheld the points raised by the Ministry of Finance in its appeal against a lower-court decision. However, it reduced the compensation to less than one-third of the 35.7 billion baht the ministry had sought.
The court found that the pledging scheme, which aimed to boost farmers' incomes by buying rice at above-market prices, resulted in massive financial losses and distorted the rice market.
It said it based its figure on 50% of the damages of 20.06 billion baht attributable to government-to-government rice sales, or 10.03 billion baht.
The Central Administrative Court ruled in 2021 that the finance ministry's compensation order was not legal because the corruption in the rice programme - which included verification of farmers' eligibility, illegal use of foreign rice, substandard storage and fake G-to-G sales - happened at the operational level.
The lower court said the ministry admitted there was no clear evidence proving that Yingluck had been directly responsible for damage caused by the scheme.
It also said that Yingluck, in her capacity as prime minister, was involved only in the memorandum of understanding signing to initiate G-to-G rice deals, but she had no role in the rice sales themselves.
Its ruling was in response to Yingluck's petition against the compensation order. The original 35.7-billion-baht figure was considered to be 20% of the total damage from the rice-pledging programme.
In its appeal, the ministry said the Central Administrative Court ruling contradicted an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Positions, which found Yingluck guilty of mishandling the rice subsidy scheme.
Yingluck, who fled Thailand in 2017 before the Supreme Court sentenced her to 5 years in prison, has consistently denied wrongdoing. Her legal team argued that the rice policy was well-intentioned and that she was not directly responsible for operational failures.
While Thursday's court ruling is final, the specifics of how the damages will be paid to the government are not clear. After Yingluck fled the country, some of her assets were seized, including her house in Nawamin Soi 111 in Bangkok. However, it has not been put up for sale.
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