Despite saying there had been a lot of progress in the investigation, Prawit said on Saturday that authorities had no idea who helped her escape.

“I’m convinced it [the help] was involved with people inside the country, but do not know if people outside lent her a hand or not,” he said.

It has been more than two weeks since Yingluck disappeared from public days before her verdict was due to be read in a case related to her government’s rice-pledging scheme.

Prawit said the government would make an official explanation of her flight after the investigation by police had clear information.

The investigation has been narrowed down to the border province of Sa Kaew after the release of evidence that was spotted there days before the verdict-reading date of August 25.

Authorities on Friday made the first official confirmation that Yingluck was last seen in a sedan filmed by CCTV at a military checkpoint in Sa Kaew, a border province to Cambodia, on August 23.

However, the CCTV footage could not track the vehicle’s movement any further, hence there was no evidence to suggest that it had crossed the border into Cambodia.

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.

The chief insisted that the DSI was investigating based on the evidence and had no intention to bully anyone. All the documentary evidence had been acquired legally, and the investigation had followed due process, he added.

The Thaksin camp, however, accused the regime of abusing the justice system to suppress political opposition.

Chusak Sirinil, head of Pheu Thai Party’s legal department said the case against Panthongtae should have been dropped since the anti-graft agency had decided not to take action.

Instead, the case was revived after the 2014 coup, he said. A DSI deputy director had been replaced along with the investigation team before the recent decision to take Panthongtae to court, Chusak added.

“Considering all these events, we must question whether this is using legal power for a political purpose,” he said.

Key red-shirt leader Nattawut Saikua made a similar claim, saying the DSI deputy chief was transferred for failing to respond to an order to speed up the investigation. This showed power had been abused to put pressure on the justice system to tackle a political adversary, he said.

Thaksin’s son was accused of involvement in a money-laundering scheme whereby loans from Krungthai bank were allegedly illegally approved. But authorities failed to find sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Nattawut said that Panthongtae had been cleared but was now being unfairly charged.

“We have to be careful about this. It could add fuel to the flames of the political divide,” he said. “Although nothing suggests that this involves people in the government, it is a point of concern that people might start to have doubts.”

THE INVESTIGATION into the flight of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has narrowed down to the border province of Sa Kaew after authorities spotted her there days before her verdict hearing in a case related to the rice-pledging scheme.

Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan said yesterday that Yingluck’s convoy was last seen on CCTV at a military checkpoint in Sa Kaew province.

Sa Kaew is 237 kilometres from Bangkok and borders Cambodia.

However, Prawit said the CCTV footage did not show the convoy at the border checkpoint but finished at a military checkpoint in the province. He did not elaborate on whether soldiers at the checkpoint had searched the cars.

Prawit called it the first “solid evidence” to emerge from a two-week investigation of Yingluck taking the escape route via the east.

He said the CCTV cameras could not track the vehicle’s movement any further hence there was no evidence to suggest that it had crossed the border into Cambodia.

Officials are trying to track down the car’s driver for interrogation, he said.

He said Yingluck could have taken any of several other routes through the area and they too were being scrutinised.

It is the first official confirmation from authorities that Yingluck was last seen heading towards Cambodia, suggesting her flight out of the country as also speculated by the police.

The information provided by the junta tallied with the police version.

According to police investigation, Yingluck was last seen in Sa Kaew on August 23 in a sedan, leading to suspicion that she may have fled to a neighbouring country, deputy police chief Pol General Srivara Rangsibrahmanakul said.

Srivara said the car he and Prawit spoke of were the same vehicle but declined to reveal the brand.

Dramatic disappearance

Yingluck pulled off a dramatic disappearing act last month a few days before the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders was due to deliver a verdict in her trial for negligence over her government’s rice pledging scheme. The court set a second date for the hearing on Septembere 27.

She has not made any public appearance since August 23, but there are widespread reports she is now with her brother Thaksin, who lives in self-exile in Dubai.

The junta has come under fire from some conservative allies over Yingluck’s disappearance, with many questioning how the junta could have let her slip through the net.

Srivara said police would continue to investigate where she had travelled to from Sa Kaew.

However, he said he could not say if she had already fled. The Thai police attache in Cambodia has been asked to report every five days. So far, there is no evidence of her entering Cambodia, Srivara said.

Army chief General Chalermchai Sittisart revealed yesterday that intelligence information showed the trail of Yingluck’s escape route ending at a military checkpoint in Sa Kaew.

According to The Nation, only the Burapha Force checkpoint on the main Suwannasorn Road has CCTV cameras installed. There are four probable routes the former PM could have taken. Seven kilometres from the military checkpoint, there is an intersection. A straight 30-kilometre drive from the intersection would lead to the Aranyaprathet border checkpoint, to cross into Cambodia.

However, a right turn and a 70km drive to Chanthaburi province would lead to two border checkpoints – Ban Laem and Bang Phakkad in Pong Nam Ron district – to cross into Cambodia.

Another 70km drive from Chanthaburi would lead to Trat province from where a 30-40km drive would lead to the border checkpoint at Ban Had Lek in Klong Yai district, to cross into Cambodia, the closest to Kho Kong.

A left turn at the intersection in Sa Kaew, would lead to the pass to Buri Ram province where major border checkpoints to Cambodia are located.

He hid thousands of reels of footage showcasing Afghanistan’s rich cultural history, knowing that if the Taleban found out he faced certain death.

“We did not expect to leave for our homes that day alive,” Ali says, clutching a saved reel. “If they had found out we had hidden movies they would have killed us.”

The ultra-conservative Taleban – who banned popular entertainment, including cinema and music, during their brutal 1996-2001 rule – burned several movie reels before leaving.

But they failed to discover some 7,000 precious films that Ali and his colleagues hid in various places across the Kabul premises of Afghan Film.

Two decades later those reels, which include long-lost movies and documentary images of Afghanistan before it was ravaged by violence, are being made available to watch again through digitisation.

The years-long project will bring back to life hugely popular Afghan feature films, centred on love rather than war, and introduce young Afghans to a side of their country they’ve never known – peace. “We were very scared but by God’s grace we were able to save the movies and now we have this culture alive,” says the 60-year-old Ali, who has worked at Afghan Film for 36 years.

‘All sorts of tricks’

The digitisation of the footage – of which there are tens of thousands of hours – is being overseen by Afghan Film general director Mohammad Ibrahim Arify.

“The reels were hidden in cans marked Indian or Western movies and in barrels buried in the ground,” Arify explains.

“Many were stored in rooms blocked by a brick wall and in fake ceilings. They used all sorts of tricks,” he adds, smiling.

Arify says they have 32,000 hours of 16-millimetre film and 8,000 hours of 35-mm film, but cataloguing is still ongoing, as members of the public continue to hand in movies that they themselves hid from the Taleban.

“I can’t say whether we will finish with 50,000 or 100,000 hours,” he says, surrounded by shelves stacked with round silver tins containing the reels.

The digitisation process is a time-consuming one.

First the reels are cleaned to remove dust and any scratches.

Then the film is watched using a projector. Its name, date and reel number are catalogued, and it is classified as a movie or documentary. Finally the reel is run through a machine which transfers it into digital form, frame by frame.

“If it’s a feature length movie the whole process can take up to four days. If it’s news images then just one day,” says employee M Fayaz Lutfi.

The project began this year and Arify hopes the entire library can be completed within two years.

“We are very proud of what we are doing because we are bringing the dead culture of Afghanistan to life by transferring the visual history of this country to digital,” Lutfi, 27, says.

‘Moving backwards’

Afghanistan’s state-produced movies of the 1970s were hugely popular among Afghans. The Farsi and Pashto-language films focused on themes of romance, culture and friendship.

The documentary footage dates from the 1920s to the late ’70s – before the Soviet invasion, the brutal civil war, the Taliban rule, the 16-year US-led fight against insurgents and the recent Islamic State group attacks on Shiites.

At a recent screening at the US embassy in Kabul’s heavily-fortified green zone, a selection of images showed a thriving Afghanistan starkly different to the war-weary nation of today.

Laughing families were seen having picnics in parks, women wearing short skirts were seen joking while there was no sign of the blast-proof concrete walls that now blot Kabul’s landscape.

“I was emotional watching those images because I only have bad memories of my country. I was not lucky [enough] to live during those times,” 34-year-old Arif Ahmadi says afterwards.

“In other countries people are moving forward but if you look at our past we are moving backwards,” he adds.

Arify says: “We will take the risk to go to every corner of the country. We want our children to learn how Afghans used to live.”

Asean members are diplomatically connected to North Korea and have faced increasing US “requests” to implement more sanctions against the country and to join the United Nation Security Council in expressing concern.

While Asean is also connected with North Korea through the Asean Regional Forum dialogue, the recent meeting in the Philippines had not proven to be fruitful, said veteran columnist Kiatchai Pongpanich at a seminar at Thammasat University.

“Asean is indeed in a tight spot,” Kiatchai said. “It should be remembered that North Korea tension is also linked with China, on whom North Korea is dependent.”

China, a regional partner and a rival with Asean regarding South China Sea conflicts, does not want North Korea to break down, which would result in many of its 25 million people fleeing across the border to China.

Asean will take time to make a move, including regarding negotiations. However, Asean’s earlier agreements had been effective to help Thailand position itself while avoiding excessive pressure, Kiatchai said.

Those agreements include the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality signed in 1971 and the Treaty on Southeast Asia Nuclear WeaponFree Zone signed in 1995. Both had solidified Asean’s stance on nuclear nonproliferation while maintaining neutrality on other issues, he said.

Asean would also have to balance itself carefully as North Korea succeeds in testing and developing its intercontinental ballistic missiles and what appears to be a hydrogen bomb.

The ongoing crisis, Kiatchai said, was rooted in the unsuccessful international measures taken against North Korea, proving that sanctions and the sixparty talks had not worked.

Damrong Thandee, director to Ramkhamhaeng University’s Centre for Korean Studies, said North Korea could also seek funding from Russia and other channels, sustaining it despite UN sanctions.

The North Korea issue was a balancing game between China and the US, he said. While the US tended to ensure that North Korea would have a limited role in the international arena given its nuclear weapon proliferation, China made sure that no country initiated a preemptive strike against North Korea, Damrong said.

“The likely scene could be that these provocations will be done along with more talks,” he said. “Both the US President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jongun are very unpredictable.

“The US might adopt containment as was used with Iran, and that could as well become a modern example for other countries,” he added.

Prayut led a Thai delegation at the 3rd Thailand-Cambodia Joint Cabinet Retreat in Phnom Penh yesterday to discuss cooperation in various fields including trade, investment, border security, migrant workers and culture.

Thailand is willing to provide more assistance to Cambodia to improve its farm products and speed up the opening of more border checkpoints to facilitate trade and travel, Prayut said in a joint press conference after the meeting.

On connectivity, both sides agreed to fulfil an agreement on the rail link from Thailand’s border province of Sa Kaew to Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh, he said. It would be a historic railway project to connect Thailand and other neighbouring countries in the Mekong basin, he said.

Hun Sen said both countries would boost bilateral trade and Thailand had agreed to buy more farm products from Cambodia as well as open four additional border checkpoints in the near future.

Security cooperation

Both countries have set targets to improve bilateral trade to reach US$15 billion (Bt496 billion) by 2020, according to Thai Deputy Government Spokesperson Werachon Sukhondhapatipak. To reach the target, the two countries have to facilitate border crossings and trade as well as contract farming, he said.

The two premiers also witnessed the signing of two documents – the Joint Declaration for the 3rd Thailand-Cambodia Joint Cabinet Retreat, to reaffirm both countries’ commitment to promote “Enhanced Partnership for Peace and Prosperity” and the Agreement for the Avoidance of Double Taxation.

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, who was also part of the delegation, said relations and cooperation between the two countries on security matters was excellent at all levels.

The defence ministries, armed forces and other joint mechanisms had good relations and worked well, he said, and they would establish a communication hotline at all levels to coordinate security matters, he said.

Among the issues for border security was illegal logging, notably of rosewood, according to spokesman Werachon, who added that the number of timber smuggling cases, as well as clashes between smugglers and Thai security forces, reduced significantly over the past year.

However, the controversial Stung Nam hydro power project, which was suspended by Prayut shortly before his departure to Phnom Penh, was not discussed, Werachon said.

The plan to purchase electricity from the 24-megawatt dam in Cambodia’s Koh Kong province and get free fresh water for the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) was put on hold because the electricity price was too expensive and the investment cost for a pipeline to transport water from the border to the EEC was too high.

Cambodian investor Ly Yong Phat of LYP Group told local newspaper Khmer Times that the delay in the deal was due to time constraints by both sides that could not process the documents on time.

Malika urged the government to set up a committee tasked with getting reimbursement from people found guilty by the courts of actions that caused financial losses to the state.

Seeking repayment could help increase state income, she said.

Malika suggested that Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha set up a panel composed of State’s attorneys and members of the Council of State.

She said there had been many cases in which final court judgements had ordered compensation over actions that led to losses affecting state budgets. Malika volunteered to be a mouthpiece demanding re-payment to the state.

Malika cited the case of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who in 2010 was ruled to be unusually wealthy. The court ordered the confiscation of Bt46 billion of his assets. The order was realised during Abhisit Vejjajiva’s administration.

Other cases relate to a loss of around Bt76 billion in the telecommunication sector but the ministers concerned had taken no action, she said.

Deputy PM in charge of economic affairs, Somkid Jatusripitak, and Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong were responsible for earning income for the state, said Malika.

“Yet, in the past three years, the government has been criticised for having no potential of doing so. Or everyone has neglected pressing for the payments ordered in court rulings,” she said.

The government should take concrete action to show that it was serious and not just talking big, she said.

If it was not PM Prayut enforcing the court orders, no one else would dare to take the step, she said.

Malika said she wants to talk with the Democrat Party’s legal department about what actions could be taken against ministers and officials for malfeasance.

That tentative time frame seemed to push back the recent estimation by the Election Commission (EC) of an election in August next year. But Pornpetch insisted it followed the normal timeframe.

There were some processes that people did not take into account, Pornpetch explained.

In passing each organic law in three readings, the NLA had 60 days, he said. But after endorsing the bill in the third reading, the president had five days before forwarding it to the prime minister. And then the PM also has to have some time to process it before seeking royal endorsement, Pornpetch said.

“All these steps must be counted. The EC’s calculation may not have included all these details,” the NLA president said.

The NLA has covered more than half the way, he said. Currently, the assembly was deliberating on the organic law governing the Ombudsman, he added.

Another bill in the NLA’s hand is the one on the human rights commission, he said. The bill was being discussed by a joint committee after the National Human Rights Commission disagreed with some points and it would enter the NLA’s meeting soon, he added.