Krisda Mahanakorn case embodies our problems

The good news is that a massive and strong verdict has finally been delivered, but the bad news is that it took a decade. And the curtain is not quite completely drawn on the Krisda Mahanakorn loan scandal despite the legal punishment handed down on some top bankers. 

The case, how it began, its aftermath and the snail-paced legal attempts to find and bring culprits to justice represent everything that is wrong about Thailand’s badly-intertwined business, political and legal systems.

Even reporters needed to look into old files to refresh their memories on what the case was all about. Young journalists who started their careers six or seven years ago might have no idea what the case is about. It takes a very long time for a corruption case to be settled in Thailand, and that probably explains the dismal state the country is in. 

The Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders sentenced Suchai Chaovisit and 

Viroj Nualkhair to 18 years in 

prison for a Bt8 billion loan 

extended by the Krungthai Bank to subsidiaries of the Krisda Mahanakorn Group in 2003. The former was the state-owned bank’s chairman and the latter its president.

Another defendant from the bank’s loan-approval committee also got 18 years. A 12-year prison term was handed to 15 bank executives and borrowers. Charges against Thaksin Shinawatra, who was defendant No. 1 in the case, were deferred.

The loan was supposedly for refinancing and land acquisition, but allegations abounded about fraud, political influence and poor judgement by the bank, which reportedly suffered heavy financial damage as a result of the controversial loan approval.

It has been 12 years since the loan was granted. Admittedly, many banking frauds surface slowly.Thailand’s problems, however, have to do with how corruption cases are handled after they are discovered. A lot of things can get in the way, not least attempts by the powers that be to cover up, distort or amplify them. Before we know it, simple fraud cases become something else entirely.

The Krisda Mahanakorn scandal is a case in point. Its political aspects have blurred the real issue and blinded many. As expected, it became heavily politicised, so much so that it turned into a proxy. Instead of being looked at how it was, the case was linked to how good or how bad Thaksin was. To many, the loan scandal underlined failures in Thai democracy. To others, the fact that charges against Thaksin were deferred hinted that his opponents always conspired to overthrow him.

The truth is, the case simply took too long. Better systems handle corruption cases a lot more quickly, and they hand down punishments uninfluenced by who is in power. That has a lot of benefits, including there not being enough time for cases to be politicised and infested with many irrelevant things. Long tampered-with processes only increase doubts, no matter what the final rulings are.

To welcome the Krisda Mahanakorn ruling is an awkward thing to do, because it more or less endorses the Thai syndrome of allowing corruption cases to drag on and on. This syndrome has been a major cause of the political crisis. Office holders or high-ranking business executives should have no privileges when it comes to criminal cases. The word “equality” has been too ideological and abstract for too long. To make it right, maybe we should associate the word with basic things like swift and just legal processes. Simply put, we should speed things up in cases like this one.