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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 24 of 65
ment’s demise in the 2014 coup.
The junta that seized control of Thailand has since suppressed dissent and banned political gatherings of
more than ve people. The long-awaited decision on Yingluck’s fate has rekindled tensions in the divided nation, but the military remains rmly in charge.
Fearing potential unrest, authorities tried to deter people from turning out Friday by threatening legal action against anyone planning to help transport Yingluck supporters. Yingluck posted a message on her Facebook page urging followers to stay away, saying she worried about their safety.
Thousands of people turned up outside the Bangkok courthouse anyway, along with thousands of police who erected barricades around the court.
Prawit Pongkunnut, a 55-year-old rice farmer from the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, said he came with 10 other farmers to show solidarity with Yingluck.
“We’re here to give her moral support because she truly cared and helped us out,” Prawit said.
The rice subsidies, promised to farmers during the 2011 election, helped Yingluck’s party ascend to power. Critics say they were effectively a means of vote-buying, while Yingluck supporters welcomed them. The rice subsidy plan Yingluck oversaw paid farmers about 50 percent more that they would have made on the world market. The hope was to drive up prices by stockpiling the grain, but other Asian producers
lled the void instead, knocking Thailand from its perch as the world’s leading rice exporter.
The current government, which is still trying to sell off the rice stockpiles, says Yingluck’s administra- tion lost as much as $17 billion because it couldn’t export at a price commensurate with what it had paid
farmers. If convicted, Yingluck has the right to appeal.
In a separate administrative ruling that froze her bank accounts, Yingluck was held responsible for about
$1 billion of those losses — an astounding personal penalty that prosecutors argued Yingluck deserved because she ignored warnings of corruption but continued the program anyway.
On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down several other verdicts. Boonsong Teriyapirom, a former commerce minister in Yingluck’s administration, was sentenced to 42 years in prison for helping secure a fraudulent rice contract. His deputy, Poom Sarapo, was sentenced to 36 years in prison for his role in the case.
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AP journalists Jerry Harmer, Grant Peck and Kankanit Wiriyasajja contributed to this report.
South Korean court sentences Samsung heir to 5 years prison By YOUKYUNG LEE, AP Business Writer
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court sentenced the billionaire chief of Samsung to ve years in prison for crimes that helped oust the country’s president, a stunning downfall that could freeze up decision making at a global electronics powerhouse long run like a monarchy.
The Seoul Central District Court said Friday that Lee Jae-yong, 49, was guilty of offering bribes to Park Geun-hye when she was South Korea’s president, and to Park’s close friend, to get government support for efforts to cement his control over the Samsung empire. The revelations that led to Lee’s arrest in February fed public outrage which contributed to Park’s removal.
A panel of three judges also found Lee guilty of embezzling Samsung funds, hiding assets overseas, concealing pro t from criminal acts and perjury. Prosecutors had sought a 12-year prison term.
The court said Lee and Samsung executives who advised him caused “a big negative effect” to South Korean society and its economy.
“The essence of the case is unethical collusion between political power and capital,” the court said in a statement. It led the public to fundamentally question the public nature of the president’s work and to have “mistrust in the morality of the Samsung group,” it said.
The families who control South Korea’s big conglomerates, known as chaebol, were lionized a genera- tion ago for helping to turn South Korea into a manufacturing powerhouse put public tolerance for double standards that put them above the law has been rapidly diminishing.