Ruangkrai provides more documents on donations
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Former senator Ruangkrai Leekitwattana yesterday filed more documents to substantiate his complaint related to "flood" donations to the Democrat Party in 2010.
Ruangkrai has asked the Election Commission and the Department of Special Investigation to check the donors on 191 lists who provided Bt36.4 million for flood victims through the Democrat Party, which ran the government at the time.
The outcome would hinge on whether an investigative report can establish whether the case falls into the category of a campaign offence or comes under the Political Parties Act.
In his complaint, Ruangkrai said he suspected that a Bt1-million donation from East Water Company was actually intended for the Democrat Party’s election campaign, but was disguised as flood-relief funds to skirt the ban on accepting contributions from state-owned enterprises.
False financial reporting could also lead to party dissolution, according to the law.
Ruangkrai said pictures of party activities to help flood victims were on its website. Besides East Water, there were other firms providing such donations, including PTT (Bt10 million) and IRPC (Bt1.5 million).
Ruangkrai, an auditor, said he had not seen the party’s accounts of its spending related to the donations. The DSI should check out the journals, ledgers, copies of receipts and the party’s financial report in 2010 as well as items filed with the EC.
The agency should also examine the flood relief account at Krung Thai Bank’s Finance Ministry branch for the transfer to the PM’s Office, he said.
“If it is found that nothing attached to this complaint shows anything illegal, the DSI should conclude the factual and legal issues clearly before sending the report to the political party registrar of the EC so that they drop the case quickly to be fair to the Democrat Party.
“But if the complaint contains some grounds for suspecting illegal conduct, please inform the political party registrar so that they can proceed with honesty in their duties,” Ruangkrai said.
Tarit Pengdit, head of the DSI, said the department had the authority to probe crimes committed by companies, but it would be careful not to override the EC, which is in charge of political parties’ conduct.
