PUBLISHED : 2 Dec 2024 at 12:57
The Department of Corrections on Monday released on parole former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom, who was earlier sentenced to 48 years in prison for corruption in government rice sales, according to an informed source.
Boonsong was released from the Medical Correctional Institution and returned to his home province of Chiang Mai. He will be on parole probation for another three years and five months, during which time he will wear an electronic tag.
Boonsong, 64, left the Medical Correctional Institution in Bangkok at 10am on Monday. He would leave for Chiang Mai on Tuesday and report to probation authorities in Chiang Mai on Wednesday, the source said.
In 2017, the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for People Holding Political Positions first sentenced Boonsong to 42 years in jail for bogus government-to-government (G2G) rice deals. His sentence was extended to 48 years in 2019 after his appeal failed. Subsequent royal clemency reduced his sentence to ten years and eight months, with his release scheduled for April 21, 2028.
In its Aug 25, 2017 ruling, the court found that the G2G contracts to export pledged rice to China were fabricated and in fact involved sales of the pledged rice to private companies in Thailand, which in turn sold the grain to a third party.
The rice was from government stocks under the rice-pledging scheme of the Yingluck Shinawatra administration, when Boonsong was commerce minister.
On the same day, Aug 25, 2017, that Boonsong was jailed, Yingluck, who had been forced to stand down as prime minister, did not show up at the court as ordered. She had fled the country.
On Sept 27, 2017, the court sentenced Yingluck in absentia to five years in prison for failing to stop corruption in her government’s rice-pledging programme.
The rice scheme was a campaign policy that helped the Pheu Thai Party win the general election in 2011, when Yingluck became prime minister.