Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of the Move Forward party, announced on Tuesday that he had given 42,000 shares of the iTV company, which belonged to his late father, to the other heirs in order to prevent any future attempts to use the media corporation as political munitions.
The troubled prime ministerial contender is accused of violating the election law, which prevents electoral candidates from owning a media corporation or holding shares in such a company, with the result that they will be disqualified, by possessing a stake in a media company.
iTV was delisted from the Thai stock market by the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2014, according to Pita’s Facebook post from today (Tuesday), who says that the shares he received have no economic worth.
On March 7, 2007, the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office cancelled iTV’s license to use the UHF TV spectrum and assigned the Public Relations Department to use that spectrum in its place. As a result, he added, iTV is no longer a media organization. Afterward, Thai PBS received the license.
Pita alleges that iTV’s 2022 balance statement, which was presented to the Department of Business Development for review, contained an ominous shift in the company’s principal business from finance to TV and media advertising, despite the fact that iTV has ceased to be a media concern.
He claimed that as a result of these unexpected events, he decided to consult with other heirs and chose to divide the shares among them, adding that the transfer of the shares was not done with the objective of avoiding responsibility.
The leader of the Move Forward party stated that he is prepared to defend himself before the Election Commission in relation to the iTV share scandal, free from being sidetracked from his duties.
