Thailand’s Supreme Court on Monday found former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra guilty of corruption in awarding government contracts while in office.
Yingluck, who was in power from 2011 until she was ousted in a 2014 military coup, has been accused of malfeasance over projects worth more than $6.7 million in 2013.
The ruling comes after Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra, a two-time prime minister who was also ousted in a coup, was paroled in February after serving six years of an eight-year prison sentence. He was released on parole months later.
Yingluck and five others were accused of failing to conduct a proper bidding process for the “Building Thailand’s Future Roadshow,” an event aimed at promoting her government’s infrastructure projects.
Nine judges on the Saudi Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the former prime minister, saying they “found there was no intention” to benefit the two major media outlets that won the contracts, a statement said.
“The project was carried out in compliance with regulations,” the court statement said.
Yingluck, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2017 to avoid conviction in a separate case, did not appear in court but was represented by her lawyer.
“We received mercy from the court and dismissed the case,” Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan, a former deputy prime minister and fellow defendant, told reporters outside the court.
“We are not corrupt,” he added.
Yingluck was sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 in a corruption case related to a 2011 rice pledge scheme for farmers.
She still faces six other cases of alleged corruption during her tenure as prime minister.
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