Former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom has challenged the legality of the government's order that he pay 1.77 billion baht in compensation of his allegedly bogus government-to-government rice sales and threatened to sue everybody behind it.
Senior commerce officials signed an order fining him on Monday.
Mr Boonsong, who served in the Yingluck Shinawatra government said, on Tuesday he would first seek a court injunction and then trial, disputing the legality of the order. He insisted he would file both criminal and civil lawsuits against all people involved in issuing the order.
The invocation of Section 44 of the interim constitution was a shortcut to achieve a goal of the government. Normal process of law should be enforced in his case, Mr Boonsong said.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha last week invoked Section 44 to give legal immunity to officials handling demands for compensation for losses incurred by and relating to the Yingluck administration's rice-pledging scheme.
The prime minister would have to explain why he assigned Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantraporn to sign the order on his behalf, although the law required him to sign it himself, demanding compensation from an alleged offender at ministerial level, Mr Boonsong said.
The order demanded he and five others pay altogether 20 billion baht in compensation. He was among 21 defendants being tried by the Supreme Court for allegedly supporting bogus government-to-government (G2G) rice sales benefitting some local traders.
The deal involved supposed G2G sales of 6.2 million tonnes of rice the Yingluck government had accrued from the pledging scheme.
Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said on Tuesday that if Mr Boonsong sought an injunction in the Administrative Court, the process of demanding compensation would be halted pending the court's ruling.
