List of 270 suspects in destitute fund scandal
A LIST of 270 civil servants allegedly involved in irregularities in disbursing the state allowance for the underprivileged has been submitted to the Department of Social Development and Welfare to proceed with disciplinary probes, said an anti-corruption official yesterday.
Korntip Daroj, secretary-general of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) that submitted the list, said the officials from the Bung Kan centre were the first to be hit with a police complaint filed by his commission.
PACC-assigned sub-committees will continue investigating the 270 accused officials at some 60 centres for protection of the destitute, Korntip said. Other centres were still under investigation because thousands of witnesses had to be questioned for each centre’s probe. Those witnesses included underprivileged people who had received full or partial allowances or no allowances at all.
He said the PACC had also submitted the list of high-ranking officials to two other agencies for further inquiry – the Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the Anti-Money Laundering Office. The AMLO has since seized assets worth Bt88 million from the accused, he said.
The PACC normally handles cases of corruption and malfeasance against lower-ranking officials, while the NACC probes cases against high-ranking officials.
He said that once the legal procedures against suspects in the first and second batches of investigation were in place, the PACC will launch a third wave of related graft probes against 28 provincial centres. The PACC-assigned sub-panels to be tasked with the probes should be appointed later this week, Korntip said.