DISCREPANCIES IN ITV’S FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOUND: MFP SEC-GEN
ITV officially began broadcasting in 1996. It lost the right to use the frequency for broadcasting in 2007 after the Office of the Prime Minister revoked its concession agreement.
Currently, the company and the Office of the Prime Minister are involved in an ongoing legal dispute.
The status of ITV is significant for Pita’s candidature and the forming of the next government.
According to Mr Chaithawat, more discrepancies were also detected in ITV’s financial statement, which was submitted to the Department of Business Development on May 10 shortly before the election.
In the statement, ITV’s business was categorised as “television”, with product and service being “advertising media and investment yields”.
Mr Chaithawat said ITV’s product and service were previously defined as “not operational due to a pending legal case”.
“The change in information in ITV’s latest financial statement submission form contradicts the answer of Mr Kim Siritaweechai, who presided over the shareholders’ meeting on Apr 26, 2023, to another question,” he claimed.
Based on the clip broadcast by 3 Miti News, Mr Kim said as long as the legal case continues, it would be very difficult to do anything with ITV at present.
Following reports of the discrepancies, ITV’s major shareholder Intouch Holdings released a statement to inform the Stock Exchange of Thailand that it will investigate the matter.
The Move Forward Party won an unexpected victory in the country’s general election on May 14 with 151 seats in parliament.
It has formed a coalition with seven political allies, including Pheu Thai, Prachachat, Thai Liberal Party, Thai Sang Thai, Fair, Plung Sungkom Mai and Pue Thai Rumphlang.
Together, they have 312 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives.
For Mr Pita to become prime minister, however, his party needs the approval from more than half of the 750-seat National Assembly, or at least 376 votes in either the House of Representatives alone or the Senate too.
If he is found to have violated the constitution due to the ITV shares, his race for the premiership could be affected.
Last month, the prime minister-elect said he was not worried about the ITV case because the shares belong to his family’s inheritance fund.
However, he later said he decided to transfer the shares to other heirs after “many irregularities that had occurred”, claiming there have been attempts to “revive ITV” into a mass media company in order to use it against him.
“I am confident that before I transferred the ITV shares, ITV did not operate any mass media business,” he said in a Facebook post on Jun 6.
“I am confident of the facts in the past but as for the facts that will happen from now on, I cannot predict whether ITV will be revived into a mass media (company). That is why the transfer of shares took place. I did not transfer the shares to avoid any wrongdoing.”