KMITL urges bank to submit key evidence

The bank, meanwhile, has insisted it has been cooperating with police since the beginning. 

The institute wants withdrawal slips of the stolen sums and a copy of the bank’s investigation report on suspect and former SCB employee Songklod Sriprasong. 

KMITL said that Songklod – subjected to a probe by a SCB committee into his suspicious behaviour in skipping steps when he approved the withdrawals without the signatures of authorised executives – was asked to resign, when it believes the bank should have taken legal action against him. Chamroon said the bank just asked Songklod to bring documents for KMITL executives to sign, then asked him to leave. 

Chamroon said the institute was also reviewing all its transactions with SCB in a bid to protect its benefits while assessing impacts if all transactions with SCB were cancelled. 

In a statement yesterday, SCB insisted it had cooperated with police without stalling, saying the financial documents police built their case on were from the bank. SCB also explained a case of having documents signed afterwards occasionally took place for special customers such as the institute. 

Insisting the bank had steps for such retrospect approvals, SCB said it got a written confirmation from KMITL executives. Whether transactions’ detail would show a person’s or group’s corruption was within police’s authority to probe, SCB added.

SCB executive Pongsit Chaichutpornsuk said that, besides setting up a working team to handle this case, speedily working on documents that police requested and already sending to police some papers, the bank also sent two boxes of documents to the institute recently. However, papers like original withdrawal slips could not be sent to the institute because they were key evidence for police inquiries, so if KMITL wants to check them, it could ask the police, he said. 

Pongsit explained the delay was partly caused by KMITL having 240 accounts with SCB hence it took some time for thorough and careful inspection first. 

He also noted that the police’s previous remark about not getting some key documents came before the bank had received a request for such papers. For KMITL’s question why SCB did not alert the Anti Money Laundering Office over suspicious transactions, he said SCB had already done that. He said Songklod’s suspicious behaviour was a one-time thing that was detected, so after the bank got KMITL confirmation, the bank believed the transaction was accurate and thus did not punish him at that point.

Meanwhile, Crime Suppression Division (CSD) deputy chief and investigation head Nos Sawetlek yesterday confirmed that police, despite having made progress in the case, did not have the key evidence from SCB yet – and was told that these old documents were in the process of being checked at head office, which could take days. 

Out of 26 people summoned to explain about money received from case suspects, police had met 19 of them and was waiting for seven others who should come in by next Tuesday, he said.