Thai ex-prime minister vows to fight negligence charge

Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose bank accounts were frozen this week, says she will fight to prove her innocence as a trial that could put her in prison for 10 years enters its final stages.
Yingluck was ousted as prime minister in 2014 when a court ruled that a personnel transfer involved nepotism. The action against her, widely considered politically motivated, came shortly before the army ousted her government in a coup.
A court on August 25 is to issue a verdict on whether she was criminally negligent as prime minister in implementing a rice subsidy policy which allegedly caused the government billions of dollars in losses.

An administrative ruling holding her responsible for about USD 1 billion of the losses led to her accounts being frozen.
Her assets were listed in a statutory declaration in 2015 as being worth 611 million baht (USD 18 million) in total. She is to give her closing statement to the court on August 1.
Yingluck has also been banned from political office for five years after the national assembly appointed by the military government impeached her.

Her supporters believe she is being persecuted by the army and by other political opponents of her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thaksin, a telecommunications mogul, was ousted in a separate 2006 military coup after demonstrations accused him of corruption, abuse of power and insulting the then-monarch, late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thaksin's ouster set off sometimes-violent battles for power between his supporters and opponents, including the military.

He has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape a prison sentence on a corruption charge. His supporters say the country's political establishment opposes him because his electoral popularity threatens their entrenched privileges.