Guilty Verdict

In a historic anti-graft case, the majority of nine Supreme Court judges yesterday voted to confiscate Bt46.37 billion of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's Bt76.6-billion frozen assets.

The Bt46.37 billion is in 35 bank accounts and unit trusts frozen by the state.

The judges ruled that Bt30.24 billion would be returned because they belonged to the former premier and his family before Thaksin took office as prime minister in 2001.

However, Bt12 billion of the Bt30.24 billion is likely to remain frozen because of back taxes claimed by the Revenue Department. The case is current in the legal process.

The judges spent seven hours and 20 minutes, taking turns to read the lengthy landmark verdict.

They voted unanimously that the fugitive ex-premier had illegally concealed his massive wealth during his two terms as premier.

The judges also ruled by a majority that Thaksin had abused his authority on several counts to benefit his family-owned Shin Corp and its subsidiaries, resulting in massive damage to the state.

The verdict clearly states that more than half of the entire Bt76.6-billion assets frozen by the state following the September 19, 2006 coup was ill-gotten.

However, the judges agreed that Bt30.24 billion of the entire amount belonged to Thaksin and his family before the former assumed the first term of public office on February 7, 2001.

Prior to February 7, 2001 when Thaksin began his first term as premier, the court found that the price of Shin Corp's stock was Bt213.09 per share. Since the stock's par value back then was Bt10 per share, compared to today's Bt1 following a share split, the stock price should then be around Bt21.30 per share.

Given the fact that Thaksin and his family held a total of 1.41 billion shares at the point they sold the company, the combined value of their holdings was then worth Bt30.2 billion.

In the judges' opinion, it would be unfair to confiscate this amount.

Regarding the Bt46.37 billion confiscated by the state, the majority of judges ruled that this lawsuit as filed by the Office of Attorney-General was centred on the allegations that a former public office holder had amassed his wealth illegally while in office.

Therefore, the judges voted to confiscate about Bt6 billion in dividends earned from the massive stockholdings, as this amount represented gains from abuse of public office.

The judges also voted to confiscate the remainder of the money from the sale of all 1.41 billion shares to Temasek Holdings of Singapore - after deducting the Bt30.2-billion portion owned by Thaksin and his family before the start of the former's public office.

Regarding the abuse-of-power charge while in public office, the judges ruled that Thaksin had clearly executed government policies to benefit Advance Info Service (AIS), the flagship of Shin Corp.

The prepaid mobile-phone concession contract between state-owned TOT and AIS was amended, with the revenue-sharing percentage reduced from 25 per cent to 20 per cent, resulting in a loss of revenue to the state estimated at Bt70 billion.

State-owned TOT's interests were also hurt when telecom roaming charges were deducted from concession fees, even though AIS was not the direct beneficiary at the time.

The judges ruled that the amendments to the concession contract between the Transport Ministry and Shin Satellite (now called Thaicom) - another unit of Shin Corp - had clearly benefited the latter.

Originally, Shin Satellite was supposed to send Thaicom4, a back-up satellite, into orbit, according to the concession contract.

However, this was later changed so that Shin Satellite could switch to iPSTAR, a different type of commercial satellite, into orbit.

The judges ruled that Shin Satellite had also clearly benefited from Thaksin's verbal order to the Foreign Ministry and state-owned Exim Bank to provide a Bt4-billion loan to the Burmese government.

The loan was used to buy equipment and satellite services from Shin Satellite, while the Finance Ministry later had to set aside a budget to subsidise the low-interest loan.