Most of these land plots in Angthong province are currently owned by Doi Kum Hillside Ltd, which is a part of Apichart’s rice-trading business network.

Better known as Sia Pieng, Apichart – along with former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom and deputy commerce minister Phumi Saraphol as well as other former senior officials of the Commerce Ministry’s Department of Foreign Trade – was found guilty by the Supreme Court for their roles in the fake G-to-G rice deals.

In addition to the 53 land plots, AMLO had previously seized other assets of Apichart and his family in connection with criminal lawsuits concerning the rice-pledging scheme.

More than 20 persons were sentenced to jail terms of 24-48 years for four fake G-to-G deals with unauthorised Chinese state enterprises for the export of several million tonnes of Thai rice to China. Instead of exporting the rice to China, the rice purchased under the previous Yingluck government’s pledging scheme was actually resold to domestic buyers at a low price.

As a result, these bogus G-to-G contracts caused financial damage estimated at more than Bt16 billion to the state.

As a major rice trader, Apichart played a key role in the fake deals which are connected with the rice-pledging scheme in which former premier Yingluck Shinawatra also faced a Supreme Court verdict but fled just before the Supreme Court was due to deliver the judgement on August 25.

Yingluck was accused of negligence in overseeing the rice pledging scheme the financial damage from which are estimated to be several hundreds of billions of baht largely because the previous government purchased a huge amount of rice paddies at the high price of Bt15,000 per tonne, double the then-prevailing market price.

Since Yingluck failed to show up for the verdict reading on August 25, the Supreme Court later issued an arrest warrant for the ex-premier and postponed the verdict reading to late September.

According to the Supreme Court’s verdict on the fake rice deals, Yingluck was officially informed of these measures to reduce the government-owned rice inventory which increased rapidly after farmers were attracted by the high price offered under the pledging scheme.