Thai court says ex-premier to stand trial over rice program
BANGKOK (AP) - Thailand's top court announced Thursday that former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra will stand trial for negligence related to a rice subsidy program overseen by her ousted government that lost billions of dollars, a move likely to deepen the long-running political crisis in the military-ruled nation.
Supreme Court judge Weerapol Tangsuwan said that a nine-member judicial panel studied documents submitted by prosecutors from the Attorney General's office last month and found the case was within the court's jurisdiction.
The case is expected to begin May 19.
Yingluck was ousted by a separate court decision shortly before the military staged a coup last May and seized power from her elected government.
The legal proceedings are widely seen as part of a broader attempt to cripple the political machine of Yingluck's brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in another army coup in 2006, and to prevent his allies from returning to power.
Thursday's announcement came two months after Yingluck was impeached on similar grounds by a military-appointed rubber stamp legislature, which banned her from politics for five years.
Prosecutors from the Office of the Attorney General had submitted 20 boxes of the case's documents to the Supreme Court's criminal division for political title holders, accusing Yingluck of dereliction in overseeing the rice subsidy program, which temporarily cost Thailand its crown as the world's top rice exporter.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission had earlier recommended that the Finance Ministry sue Yingluck for compensation for damage caused by the rice program and suggested the amount should be at least 600 billion baht ($18.4 billion).
The rice-buying program, a flagship policy that helped Yingluck's Pheu Thai Party win elections in 2011, had accumulated losses of at least $4.46 billion since it was introduced in 2011, as the Thai government stockpiled rice to avoid even bigger losses.
Under the program, farmers were paid about 50 percent above what they would get on the world market. The anti-graft body alleged that Yingluck failed to stop massive losses to state coffers.