Thailand's court seizes $1.4 bln from Thaksin
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Thailand's Supreme court Friday night handed down a verdict ruling that 1.4 billion U.S. dollars of all the 76-billion-baht (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) of Thai ex- premier Thaksin Shinawatra's frozen assets will be confiscated.
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| A Thaksin Shinawatra supporter cries as she learn of a court ruling against the former Thai prime minister, Friday, Feb. 26, 2010, in Bangkok, Thailand. [Xinhua] |
The verdict said the 46.37 billion baht worth of assets (1.4 billion U.S. dollars) are confiscated because they were gained through malpractice during Thaksin's premiership and the remaining 30.25 billion baht will be returned to the Thaksin family.
The verdict reading started at about 1:40 p.m. local time and it took more than 7 hours before the nine judges from the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Political Office Holders gave the final ruling at 9:00 p.m.
Responding to this outcome via a video link, Thaksin living in exile said he will accept the verdict but claimed the court ruling is "unjust".
In his address, Thaksin apologized to his three children for all the difficulties they had to go through. The Thai political conflicts now is very intense, he said, "Please let me be the last person" who suffered the injustice.
Neither the self-exiled former prime minister nor his family members attended the verdict session. In his website www. thaksinlive.com early Friday, Thaksin claimed that all of his money and assets came from years of hard working instead of corruption as alleged.
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