Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Agencies prepare legal campaign against Thaksin


Government agencies are stepping up their efforts to launch further criminal and civil legal action against ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his associates.

The action follows the decision by the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions last Friday to order the seizure of 46.37 billion baht in assets from the Shinawatra family.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has instructed all government agencies to seek ways to bring civil and criminal charges against Thaksin in the wake of the court ruling.

Mr Abhisit said after a cabinet meeting yesterday he had told ministers to tell state agencies under their ministries to study the court's rulings in detail to see whether there were channels to press further charges.

He said he had instructed the Office of the Attorney-General to help summarise the main points of the rulings.

"Several state agencies have been damaged, so every agency will have to get back to study the rulings to take legal action [against Thaksin]," he said.

The prime minister did not set a timeframe for agencies to announce their recommendations.

Mr Abhisit said he had told the cabinet ministers to learn from this case and emphasised that they must ensure all agencies under their supervision are not lured into corruption.

He also said he was confident the government would be able to control demonstrations being orchestrated by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) between March 12 and 14.

"We don't see the need to implement the Internal Security Act at the moment," Mr Abhisit said.

National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) commissioner Pakdee Pothisiri said his agency was obliged to act on four cases related to the Feb 26 verdict.

The first case is related to an allegation by Veera Somkhwamkid, a leading member of the People's Alliance for Democracy, that Thaksin has intentionally filed a false list of his assets and liabilities.

The NACC has appointed a subcommittee to look into the allegation.

Three more cases have been forwarded to the NACC, Mr Pakdee said.

The first involves the allegation that executives of TOT Plc had abused their authority by reducing the proportion of revenue sharing from pre-paid cards for mobile phones between TOT and Advanced Info Service Plc (AIS) from 25% to 20%.

The second case is related to the allegation that executives of TOT and CAT Telecom had changed the concession contracts to allow AIS to use roaming networks with other mobile phone service providers and allowed AIS to deduct roaming expenses from its total revenue before sharing the revenue with TOT.

They also lowered the roaming service rates in the concession contract between CAT Telecom and Digital Phone Co, a Shin Corp subsidiary.

The third case involves the illegal approval of the IPSTAR satellite project in favour of Shin Satellite Plc and other amendments in concession contracts in favour of Shin Satellite and Shin Corp.

AIS, Shin Satellite and Shin Corp are all businesses in which members of the Shinawatra family held a majority shareholding.

Mr Pakdee said the NACC had appointed subcommittees to handle the three cases after it took them over from the disbanded Assets Scrutiny Committee.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has moved to take further steps on the issue.

Permanent secretary for finance Sathit Limphongphun said the ministry would spend about 60 days quantifying the extent of the financial damage to the state based on the Feb 26 rulings.

The State Enterprise Policy Office would be in charge of calculating the damage related to the changes in concession contracts between state enterprises and private companies, Mr Sathit said

No comments: