Court corruption clips update

Readers might recall the kerfuffle that erupted back in October 2010 over leaked tapes from the Democrat Party dissolution case that quickly came to be seen as evidence of bias in the Constitutional Court.

A scapegoat was chosen and this was meant to deflect attention from the substance of the tapes. This came when 5 judges held a press conference to say that a Constitution Court secretary – Pasit Sakdanarong – who appeared in one of the videos had been sacked. He was then said to be on the run and overseas. Within a maze of counter-allegations and the use of the police to blur the true nature of the allegations, a search for “criminals” who made secret video tapes was on, ignoring the substantive evidence of judicial corruption.

Even when more clips were released, further adding to the evidence of corruption and elite collusion, Pasit was the only suspect for anything. For more on Pasit see this post and for some of his allegations, see here.

The story now has something of a conclusion, with The Nation reporting that the “Crime Suppression Division has submitted its investigative report on the five Constitution Court clips for prosecution review, recommending to drop the case involving a key suspect Pasit Sakdanarong who is adviser to the Public Health minister.”

Perhaps connections with the new government help, but there continues to be claims of a “lack of evidence to link Pasit to the posting of the clips…”. As the report notes,

The five clips were posted on Youtube, depicting what many saw as an attempt to sway the high court to rule for party dissolution.

The gist of clips were edited to show judges discussing the case in private chamber.

Even now, there is no attention to the substance of the claims against the judges.

One interesting footnote to the story is that “CSD investigators concluded that there was no evidence or witness to link the two suspects to the clips. In regard to the identity of the uploader on Youtube, the US-based service provider refused to cooperate on ground that the action did not fall under an offence under the American laws.”