Los Angeles movie executives couple were sentenced to six months in jail after finding guilty of paying US$1.8 million in bribes to win the right to manage the Bangkok International Film Festival, US media reported Thursday.
Gerald Green, 78, and Patricia Green 55, who were convicted last September on charges of conspiracy, violating anti-corruption laws and money-laundering, also face six months home detention and must pay US$250,000 restitution.
The couple were found guilt of paying bribes to a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Juthamas Siriwan, in exchange for receiving contracts to manage and operate the annual film festival in the Thai capital.
The indictment said the Greens paid US$1.8 million in bribes to the former tourism chief's daughter, via bank accounts in Singapore, Jersey and Britain set up in the names of the former governor's daughter and a friend.
After facing decades in jail for bribing more than US$13 million while twhile producing a film festival in Bangkok, married couple Gerald and Patricia Green were sentenced today to just six months.
The fact that Mr. Green is 77 and uses an oxygen tank for emphysema clearly played a role in the judge's relative leniency. The producer of "Rescue Dawn" and his wife were found guilty last year under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of bribery and money laundering after evidence showed they improperly wooed a Thai government official.
The couple was arrested in 2007 after running the Bangkok International Film Festival from 2002-2006.