Supachai Srisupa-aksorn, the former chairman of the Klongchan Credit Union Cooperative (KCUC), has been cleared of fraud in the KCUC embezzlement scandal.
The 410 plaintiffs at the Criminal Court alleged that the KCUC and Supachai had been guilty of public fraud by falsely representing the KCUC to be a bank with a stable financial status.
They said the KCUC was merely a community financial institution but had been advertised by the defendants as a financially stable bank with the ability to pay deposit interests at higher rates than those on offer at other banks.
This false representation, they alleged, caused the plaintiffs to lose money and other assets with a total value of 1.15 billion baht.
They also argued that the KCUC had used the expression "U Bank" in various advertising campaigns but the court said that alone was not sufficient to make them misunderstand the nature of KCUC's business.
The court ruled further that all 410 plaintiffs had been able to withdraw money, as well as receive interest and dividends from KCUC before they were unable to conduct any withdrawal transactions on April 2, 2013.
The court was not convinced that KCUC intended to deceive the plaintiffs and the general public as alleged.
As for Supachai, the court said the plaintiffs had failed to present sufficient evidence of any public fraud.
The Criminal Court also issued acquittals in another KCUC case involving Supachai, in which 292 plaintiffs had also claimed the cooperative and Supachai had committed public fraud.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs' evidence had not proved the defendants guilty and it acquitted them of the charge.
The Supreme Court had previously sentenced Supachai to seven years in jail for siphoning off 22.1 million baht from the cooperative in 2013.
Much of the money had been donated to the powerful Wat Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani's Klong Luang district.