• 
• 

Published on September 11, 2007

Kaewsan said Thaksin would be charged with breaching the Constitution and breaking the National Counter Corruption Act that bans Cabinet ministers from holding shares and concessions. An AEC panel unearthed evidence to prove that Thaksin held Shin Corp shares through Ample Rich and Win Mark.

According to the evidence submitted by Kanchanapa Honghern, an account of Ample Rich opened with UBS Singapore Bank on June 11, 1999, indicated that Thaksin was the sole authorised director to withdraw the 329 million shares deposited with the bank.

Although Thaksin claimed he sold the shares to his children Panthongtae and Pinthongta on June 29, 2005, he continued to be the sole authorised director. During his term from 2001-2005, Thaksin thus broke the Provision 100 (3) of the National Counter Corruption Law.

The AEC also found that since 1999, Thaksin concealed 55 million Shin Corp shares in the account of Win Mark, which deposited the shares with Vicker which later transferred 54 million to UBS Singapore.

Kaewsan said the AEC found evidence which showed that the dividends from Shin Corp before being sold to Temasek, which were paid to Panthongtae and Pinthongta as well as his sister Yingluck, all went to Pojaman's accounts. "This proves that the owners of Ample Rich and Win Mark are Thaksin and Pojaman,'' Kaewsan said.

The AEC also learnt that before Shin Corp sale to Temasek, Win Mark committed insider trading by using insider information and bought 58 million shares from small shareholders at Bt39 each and sold 74 million shares to Temasek in a tender offer at Bt49.25 per share. This means the company made Bt500 million from insider information, Kaewsan said.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission must take responsibility for failure to find out about the offence after investigation,'' he said.

The AEC will ask the SEC to further investigate over the point of insider trading, he said.

Of the Bt3.5 billion that Win Mark gained from the Shin Corp share sale, Bt500 million was illegally earned through insider trading and was deposited abroad, Kaewsan said.

The AEC will further investigate whether the money that Thaksin used in buying Manchester City Football Club was legally earned.

AEC spokesman Sak Korsaengruang said the panel also decided to release Bt91 million of Yingluck's money out of some Bt982 million frozen as proceeds from the sale of Shin Corp shares.

Yingluck used the money to pay Bt80 million in debts on behalf of Payap Shinawatra on March 23 last year and Bt11 million in debts on behalf of Sak Shinwongwattana. The AEC ruled that the debts had to be paid to comply with the law.

The AEC also requested the Land Department and Interior Ministry to suspend legal proceedings for land purchases by Panthongtae. Money from the Shin Corp share sale was found to have been used to buy four plots of land in Nakhon Ratchasima, each measuring more than one rai.

Sak said the AEC would meet with the Foreign Ministry permanent secretary on Thursday to find a way to get the CTX scanner contracts translated promptly. The ministry told the panel it could not finish the translation of more than 1,400 pages of documents in time because each page could take up to four hours to complete as they were full of technical terms.

Budsarakham    Sinlapalavan

 The Nation