Pramest told me that he had been asked at the last minute to defend one of these cases, filed on May 2, just before the Criminal Court starts preliminary hearings tomorrow. That came hot on the heels of the court's dismissal last Monday of another perjury lawsuit that had been filed by Monson against Thaksin on July 20. In that case, the court said the statute of limitations had expired.

However, on June 19 the court agreed to hear the May 2 case. It has scheduled five preliminary hearings that will start tomorrow to decide if there should be a full-scale trial in this case. In this case, Monson has accused Thaksin, his former business partner back in the 1980s, of using false evidence in an earlier case filed by the former International Broadcasting Corp (IBC) accusing Monson of embezzlement. The two businessmen were partners in IBC, which is now part of UBC, the country's biggest cable-TV operator. Monson was acquitted. According to Monson, their relationship turned sour after Thaksin took over the original IBC, depriving him of his rightful share of the business as one of its partners. Monson has claimed that he is entitled to a 40-per-cent share of the former IBC, amounting to an estimated payout of some US$160 million (Bt5.95 billion).

With regard to Monson's May 2 perjury lawsuit against Thaksin, Pramest said the defendant's lawyer had filed an objection claiming that the statute of limitations on this case had also expired. In response to the filing, the court asked the plaintiff's lawyer to defend the case. Pramest said he had countered the defendant's objection on the grounds that the defendant had twice resorted to filing objections to a trial on perjury allegations.

"The defendant earlier raised an objection to the perjury charge when we filed one several years ago by arguing that there had not yet been a final ruling on the related embezzlement lawsuit.

"As a result, we had to wait for a long time. We're still waiting, since the Supreme Court has not delivered the final verdict yet, even though we already won in two lower courts.

"As the 10-year statute of limitations is near expiry, we re-filed the perjury case, arguing that we could not wait any longer or else we would lose the right to have a trial.

"The court decided on June 19, 2006 that there would be five preliminary examinations on this case to decide if there should be a full trial.

"Now, we hope that the court will give us a chance to have a fair trial since it's clear that the defendant's whole point is to block us from having a trial.

"Previously, it was argued that this perjury charge ought to wait until the embezzlement case got the final Supreme Court ruling.

"Then, it was argued that the statute of limitations had expired based on a definition of the timeline. So it's now up to the court to make a judgement if there should really be a trial," he said.

According to the court, the first hearing on the perjury charge will take place tomorrow. A second

session is set to follow on September 25. The third, fourth and final sessions are due to take place on October 2, October 9 and October 16.

 Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

 nop1122@yahoo.com