Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of the Move Forward party, announced on Tuesday that he had given the other heirs of his late father’s 42,000 shares in the iTV firm, preventing any attempt to use the media corporation as political armament.
The troubled prime ministerial contender is accused of violating the election law, which prevents electoral candidates from owning a media company or holding shares in such a corporation, with the result that they will be disqualified, by possessing a stake in a media company.
Due to iTV’s delisting from the Thai stock market by the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2014, Pita alleges in a post on Facebook today (Tuesday) that the shares he received are worthless.
He added that since the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office terminated iTV’s agreement to use the UHF TV spectrum on March 7, 2007, and chose the Public Relations Department to use that spectrum in its place, iTV is no longer a media organization. Subsequently, Thai PBS received the license.
Pita alleges that, despite the fact that iTV has ceased to be a media corporation, there was a questionable change in the principal business of iTV from finance to TV and media advertising in the 2022 balance sheet of iTV that was presented to the Department of Business Development for review.
He said that as a result of these odd events, he decided to consult with additional heirs and chose to divide the shares among them, noting that the transfer of shares was not done with the objective of evading responsibility.
In regards to the iTV share dispute, the leader of the Move Forward party stated that he is prepared to defend himself before the Election Commission without getting sidetracked from his task.
