By Xinhua,
Bangkok : Thailand’s Supreme Court on Wednesday handed down a six-month jail term to each of three lawyers working for ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra over a charge of attempted bribery in which a lawyer handed a pastry box filled with cash to a court official on June 10.
The three are lawyer Pichit Chuenban, his assistants Suppasri Srisawasdi and Thana Tansiri.
According to a report by the Nation news website, Supreme Court Vice President Mongkol Thapthiang, who heads a panel investigating the case, said the panel found the three guilty of the bribery charge by handing the pastry box containing two million baht (some61,000 U.S. dollars) in cash to a court official when they appeared on June 10, representing Thaksin and his wife Pojaman, at the court to report that the couple had returned from a business trip overseas.
The ruling is final and could not be appealed.
The case, branded by local media as the “Pastry Gate,” immediately gained much spotlight in the country, when it was revealed that a lawyer then referred to as one who worked for some former politician, on June 10 walked into the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders, which handled graft investigations against politicians, filed a writ and handed a pastry box to court officials.
Earlier media reports said when a clerk noticed the cash and asked the lawyer about it, he got the reply: “Divide the money up among yourselves.” The cash was then returned to the lawyer under the instruction of a judge.
Earlier Pichit had denied he was the lawyer implicated in the case.
He represented Thaksin and his wife in a case that the ex-premier was alleged of abusing power to help his wife get a plot of land in downtown Bangkok in an government auction at a budget price.