Ex-MP Pareena ordered to pay 7.6m for by-election after encroachment case

The Ratchaburi Provincial Court ordered on March 11 that Pareena must pay 7.673 million baht to the Office of the Election Commission plus annual interest of 5%.

The EC Office’s lawsuit had demanded that Pareena pay 7.251 million baht for the cost of holding the by-election in Ratchaburi’s Constituency 3 after she was removed as its MP.

The amount added up to 7.673 million with interest accrued since the lawsuit was filed on July 19 last year.

Pareena was ordered to pay the amount within 30 days or her assets would be seized and she would be put behind bars.

The court order was posted at Pareena’s house on Saturday after she was not present to acknowledge it.

In April 2022, the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Office found Pareena in violation of political ethics by possessing state-owned land reserved for landless farmers. The court banned her from politics for life, effective retroactively from March 25, 2021, when the court suspended her as an MP on the advice of the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Pareena’s case surfaced in 2019 when serial petitioner Ruangkrai Leekitwattana urged authorities to inspect the MP’s 711-rai poultry farm in Ratchaburi’s Chom Bung district.

A probe by the Royal Forest Department found that her chicken farm was encroaching on protected forestland reserved for landless people.