A Thai Member of Parliament (MP) and a newspaper critic face millions of dollars in damages and significant prison time after being sued for libel by Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, according to a story by the Guardian Newspaper. Both were sued for saying that Tesco, known as Tesco Lotus in Thailand, is expanding too aggressively in their country at the risk of “mom-and-pop” businesses and for accusing the company of using loopholes to avoid paying Thai taxes. Both the MP and newspaper critic say Tesco sued them as a bullying tactic to silence debate.

The story notes that if the newspaper critic loses the case and receives the maximum punishment he will go bankrupt. However, despite the massive damage claims, Thai courts have never awarded over £33,000 (approximately $65,000) for damages in libel cases.

Tesco responded in a statement:

“Tesco is of course not trying to intimidate Mr Kamol or Mr Jit, but we do have a right to defend our company and our colleagues against false allegations. We took this action reluctantly but felt we had no choice after a sustained campaign of misinformation spread by the two individuals over many months.

Tesco does not have a history of acting through the courts and will only do so under extreme provocation. In fact until 2008 we had never taken any libel action at all. It would therefore be irresponsible and misleading to suggest that Tesco had a policy of attempting to suppress criticism.”

Well, Thailand isn’t the only place where Tesco is suing someone for speaking out against the company; it’s also filed libel charges in its own backyard. The company recently filed libel charges in the UK against the Guardian newspaper for reporting on similar tax avoidance. According to the Guardian:

Tesco said the Guardian knowingly misled its readers in a series of articles and a podcast. The retailer said the Guardian had wrongly alleged that Tesco had contrived a tax avoidance structure involving a series of joint venture partnerships held largely offshore to avoid paying up to £1bn of UK corporation tax on sales of its UK properties. Tesco also said the Guardian had wrongly accused the retailer of having already avoided corporation tax on £500m of profits from two property deals using that structure.

The Guardian, like the Thai dissenters, argued that Tesco’s lawsuit was nothing more than an attempt to bully people from speaking out against the company. The newspaper continued:

“This looks like a deliberate tactic by Britain’s largest retailer to shut down perfectly legitimate inquiries into their methods of tax avoidance. At the same time that two Tesco directors are reported to have lobbied the government in private on matters of taxation, the company is now seeking to chill public debate on the same issues”

The Guardian article also states that Tesco’s new U.S. operations, Fresh and Easy, has come under fire by political activists, though the company says it has no plans to file libel charges in the U.S.