The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a three-year prison sentence given to former politician Vatana Asavahame for fraud over land purchases in the Klong Dan wastewater treatment project in Samut Prakan province.
Vatana: Guilty of illegal land purchases
The court also gave similar jail terms to six executives of companies responsible for buying land and building the plant.
The Supreme Court read the 100-page verdict on 19 defendants, three of whom, including Vatana, were not present at the court yesterday.
The court issued arrest warrants for two absentee defendants. However, Vatana fled the country a decade ago after the original trial.
The felonies, according to the verdict, involve two main activities.
The first involved illegal land purchases, mainly perpetrated by Vatana who played a major role in acquiring public coastal land to resell to the state at a cost of 1.9 billion baht. The second involved illegal contracts with companies to build the facility.
"Mr Vatana was found guilty of the charge of illegal land purchasing only. He escaped the charge of illegally making contracts," said Suprawat Jaismut, lawyer to the Pollution Control Department (PCD), the state agency that initiated the project almost two decades ago.
The department filed a case to the criminal court in 2004 after finding that the 23 billion baht wastewater was ridden with irregularities.
The verdict yesterday was deemed favourable to the PCD, as the supreme administrative court had earlier ordered the state agency to pay over 9 billion baht in compensation to the companies in the consortium for halting the project.
This verdict indicates that the contracts were illegal, said Mr Suprawat, adding that the PCD will seek to reclaim the compensation.