Former Thai cabinet members allegedly involved in a rice-trading corruption scandal were on Friday impeached by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA).
Members of the legislative assembly cast overwhelming votes to impeach former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyabhirom and former deputy commerce minister Poom Sarapon on charges of involvement in corruption earlier alleged by the National Anti-Corruption Commission over scandalous rice dealings a few years ago, Xinhua news agency reported.
The NLA members voted 180-6 and 182-5 to impeach Boonsong and Poom respectively while a former Foreign Trade Department chief, namely Manat Soiploy, was also impeached by the legislative body for similar corruption charges.
The former cabinet members had earlier dismissed the charges saying no justice had been served them, however.
Under a rice subsidy programme earlier implemented by a previous Yingluck Shinawatra government, Boonsong and Poom had allegedly failed to combat graft involving the "doctored" trading of rice on government-to-government basis only to see the government suffer heavy financial losses.
As a result of the impeachment due to the alleged involvement in the rice scam, the two former cabinet members are automatically banned from politics for five years from now.
Earlier this year, Yingluck was impeached by the NLA under similar duty-negligence charges involving her rice subsidy programme and thus banned from politics for five years as well.
The deposed premier had dismissed the charges to no avail, saying she had ordered investigation into the rice scandal but the NACC maintained that she had ultimately failed to fight graft involving high-ranking government officials and rice dealers.
The Yingluck government's rice programme under which farmers nationwide had been given an average of $500 for a ton of their rice had been accused of incurring up to $20 billion in operational losses.
