AFP
Army-appointed graft-busters have slapped two children of ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra with a 789 million dollar tax bill over a politically explosive business deal, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The Assets Examination Committee late Monday ordered Panthongtae and Pintongta Shinawatra to pay a total of 27.42 billion baht (789 million dollars) in taxes and penalties over the sale of Thaksin's telecom giant Shin Corp in January last year.
The latest order includes 10.4 billion baht (321 million dollars) in taxes and fines that the committee ordered them to pay three weeks ago.
"The amount includes corporate income tax from sales, fines and dividends. The more they delay, the more tax they have to pay," committee spokesman Sak Korseangraung said.
Thaksin's family earned 1.9 billion dollars when they sold Shin Corp to Singapore's state-linked Temasek Holdings. The deal was structured to avoid paying any taxes and Thaksin has repeatedly insisted that the sale was completely legal.
But the corruption investigators ruled that Thaksin's two adult children had wrongly avoided paying taxes owed by their holding company, Ample Rich, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands.
"We decided they have to pay the tax because the Ample Rich company is a foreign company that operates in Thailand," Sak said.
The total tax bill is 4.5 times the amount originally owed on the deal, the committee said in its ruling.
"This is all the work of their father and mother and the Shinawatra tax adviser who carefully planned this," the ruling said.
The Shin Corp sale sparked public anger that erupted in months of street protests culminating in the coup last September.
Thai prosecutors last month charged Thaksin's wife Pojaman Shinawatra, her step-brother and her personal secretary with tax evasion over an earlier sale of Shin Corp shares, in the first criminal corruption since the coup.
