Thailand's former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has fled the country as a court was about to deliver a verdict in a two-year trial over agricultural subsidies, a source close to her family says. The source declined to say where she had gone, but Thailand's top immigration official said there were no records of Yingluck having left through proper channels.
Yingluck failed to show up to hear the verdict being delivered. Her lawyer said she was ill but the court rejected the explanation and Thailand's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant.
The lawyer, Norawit Larleang, told CNN that he didn't know whether the former prime minister was in Thailand or had left.
Yingluck -- ousted by a military coup in 2014 -- had been barred from leaving Thailand without court approval since 2015 when her trial started.
Her bail of 30 million baht ($900,000), posted when the trial began more than two years ago, has been confiscated.
Yingluck faced up to 10 years in prison for alleged negligence over a rice-buying scheme, which cost the country billions of dollars. The court has set a new date for the verdict of September 27.
In 2016, Yingluck pledged to see through her trial, and said that she had not considered leaving the country.
Former Thai PM: 'I've never thought of fleeing' 01:51
"I stand firm to fight my case. All eyes are on me. I have duties and responsibilities to carry on.
"I assure you, I've never thought of fleeing."
CNN reports that the rice subsidy program, introduced in 2011, pledged to pay farmers well above the market rate for their crop, and ended up costing the country billions.
But critics said it wasted large amounts of public funds trying to please rural voters, hurting exports and leaving the government with huge stockpiles of rice it couldn't sell without losing money.
Yingluck said the rice subsidy scheme was "beneficial for the farmers and the country" and that claims it lost money were wrong and motivated by political bias against her.
Yingluck's no-show was a "big surprise" to most people in Thailand, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University told CNN.
"The way that she had fought, it had looked like she was willing to go through with (the trial).
Thitinan said Yingluck's decision to skip the verdict hearing will have "emboldened" the military government.
