Yingluck Shinawatra Denied Retrial by Supreme Administrative Court

Home - Politics - Yingluck Denied Retrial By Supreme Administrative Court Last Updated on September 24, 2026 by Jeff Tomas BANGKOK – Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court has officially denied former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s request for a retrial. She desperately wanted to reopen her highly controversial rice-pledging compensation case. This ruling means her massive financial liability of over 10 billion baht remains firmly in place. The highly anticipated order was read at the Central Administrative Court in Bangkok on Wednesday, September 23. Yingluck and her husband had filed the petition hoping to clear her name and erase the debt. However, the panel of judges decided that the submitted materials fell short of legal requirements. The original corruption allegations stem from national rice-pledging programs during the 2012 and 2013 production years. The government bought rice from local farmers at prices much higher than the global market rate. The scheme was intended to boost rural incomes but quickly ran into massive financial trouble. The court noted that corruption occurred at multiple stages of this nationwide agricultural program. This included fraudulent farmer certification, poor storage practices, and highly irregular government-to-government rice sales. Yingluck was held accountable for failing to use her power to prevent these massive losses to the state. The massive financial drain on the state budget caused widespread public outrage at the time. Authorities eventually ordered six other state officials to compensate the Commerce Ministry for related losses. Yingluck argued that she was unfairly grouped into these specific calculations, but the court disagreed. Yingluck’s legal team presented a specific Commerce Ministry letter as their primary new evidence. This official document, dated August 2025, was explicitly marked as highly urgent. Her team firmly believed it would change the established facts of the ongoing corruption case. The Supreme Administrative Court disagreed with this legal strategy entirely. The judges found that the letter actually addressed a completely different administrative order from 2016. Because it did not directly relate to the foundation of her specific lawsuit, it could not alter the past verdict. This decisive ruling represents a major legal defeat for the former Thai leader. Her exact financial liability remains fixed at an astounding 10.02 billion baht. She must still face the consequences of the original Finance Ministry compensation order. Her personal lawyer, Norawit Lalaeng, stated this decision permanently ends the application for a retrial. The lower Central Administrative Court originally declined to accept this legal request back in January 2026. Now, the highest administrative court has fully supported that earlier judicial refusal. Despite this major setback, her legal defense team believes there might still be minor technical issues left to contest. However, the primary legal avenue to completely overturn the massive financial penalty is now officially closed. The long-running saga over the devastating rice-pledging scheme is finally drawing to a definitive close for the former leader.