Thailand's ex-Prime Minister Yingluck ordered to pay for losses from a rice subsidy program

Key Points

• The Supreme Administrative Court ordered ex-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to pay more than 10 billion baht ($304 million) for severe negligence in her rice subsidy program, reversing part of a 2021 ruling that had cleared her.
• The flagship subsidy paid farmers about 50% above global market prices but backfired as rival exporters undercut Thailand, leading to unsold stockpiles and the loss of its position as the world’s top rice exporter.
• Yingluck’s legal team is seeking a retrial, arguing that the government sold leftover rice for around 200 billion baht ($6.08 billion), which they say fully covers the estimated losses.
• Yingluck has been living in exile since 2017 after a 2014 military coup, and her family remains politically dominant—her brother Thaksin returned in 2023 and her niece Paetongtarn Shinawatra is Thailand’s current prime minister.

BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai court on Thursday ordered exiled former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to pay more than 10 billion baht ($304 million) to compensate for losses incurred by a money-losing rice farming subsidy program that her administration had implemented more than a decade ago.

The Supreme Administrative Court partially reversed a 2021 court ruling that cleared her. It found her guilty of severe negligence in relation to rice sales to other countries and said she failed to act on many government agencies’ warnings of possible corruption.

She was ordered to pay half of the damages estimated at more than 20 billion baht ($608 million). The court annulled a 2016 order by the Finance Ministry for her to pay 35.7 billion baht ($1.1 billion) in compensation, saying Yingluck was not proven directly responsible for the alleged corruption.

The rice subsidy program was a flagship policy that helped Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party win the 2011 general election. Under the program, the government paid farmers about 50% more than they would have received on the global market, with the intention of driving up prices by warehousing the grain.

But other rice-producing countries captured the international rice market by selling at competitive prices. Thailand as a result lost its position as the world’s leading rice exporter and large amounts of rice sat unsold in government warehouses.

After the ruling, Yingluck posted on her Facebook page that she had no intention to cause damages and was being held responsible “for a debt I did not cause.”

Her lawyer Norrawit Larlaeng said her legal team plans to request a retrial. He said that the government had already sold the leftover rice from the subsidy program for around 200 billion baht ($6.08 billion), which covers all damages estimated by the Finance Ministry.

Yingluck, the first female prime minister of Thailand, came to power in 2011, five years after her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was toppled in a coup and fled abroad. Yingluck also was forced out by a military coup in 2014, and fled the country in 2017, ahead of a court verdict. She's been living in exile since then.

Thaksin, a highly popular but divisive political figure, returned home in 2023 before being granted clemency in a corruption trial because of his age and health.

Thailand's current Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is Thaksin's daughter.

Last year, Yingluck was cleared by a court on unrelated charges of mishandling funds for a government project in 2013. In December 2023, the court also cleared her of abuse of power in connection with a personnel transfer she had overseen.