NACC indicts Vatana in Klong Dan case
Former science minister late Yingphan also indicted but Suwat is absolved
The national anti-graft agency yesterday resolved to indict fugitive former deputy interior minister Vatana Asavahame in connection with the Klong Dan scandal, its spokesman Klanarong Chantik said.
The members of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) agreed unanimously that Vatana committed malfeasance and criminal coercion, according to the spokesman.
The NACC gave Vatana, who is now on the run, 15 days to explain himself on the corruption charge relating to the construction of the Klong Dan wastewater-treatment project in Samut Prakan.
The deadline could be extended at the request of the accused, Klanarong said.
Another ex-Cabinet member, the late former science and technology minister Yingphan Manasikarn, was also indicted by the NACC. Yingphan was found to have acted against a Cabinet resolution and a Prime Minister’s Office regulation by hiring the project contractor at a price Bt1.4 billion higher than the median price.
The agency decided not to pursue a posthumous case against Yingphan, who died in December 2003.
The NACC members unanimously voted not to indict Suwat Liptapanlop, who was then the transport minister, because he was absent during a Cabinet meeting that endorsed the Bt23.7-billion project. They found he was not involved in any wrongdoing and that his family firm, which was part of the contracting venture, had no management power, Klanarong said.
The agency also decided to pursue criminal and disciplinary cases against four former senior officials involved in the controversial project, and disciplinary action against seven less-senior officials, the spokesman said.
The Klong Dan scandal was brought to the attention of the National Counter-Corruption Committee, the NACC’s precursor, in 1999. The investigation was taken over by the NACC after its establishment a year later. The probe was interrupted in 2004 and the current NACC resumed it in 2006.
The probe moved slowly because it involved 114 witnesses and 403 documents containing some 17,000 pages – most of them in English and requiring translation, Klanarong said.
Vatana, who is believed to have fled the country, was last seen publicly in June 2008. The Supreme Court’s Criminal Division on Political Office Holders in August 2008 sentenced him to 10 years in jail for abuse of power and criminal coercion in connection with the Klong Dan scandal.
The court found Vatana, while serving as deputy interior minister, guilty of forcing state officials to issue land title deeds unlawfully for public land plots that were later sold to the Department of Pollution Control to house the Klong Dan wastewater-treatment project.
The project was approved in 1995. Two years later, Yingphan, then science minister, entered an agreement with the contractors. In 1999 local residents began a campaign against the project after learning public land was used.
A corruption investigation began after Vatana, then an influential politician from Samut Prakan, was accused of making profits from the land plots used in the project’s construction.
