‘TRACES OF CORRUPTION FOUND EVERYWHERE’

>> A further 30 million baht is missing from the Education Ministry’s fund to help vulnerable girls, bringing the estimated loss in an embezzlement scandal facing the fund to almost 120 million.

Atthapol Truektrong, ministerial inspector in his capacity as chairman of the ministry’s fact-finding panel probing the alleged embezzlement case, revealed yesterday that the additional loss was found as the investigation was about 60% complete.

“I have to admit that we found traces of corruption literally everywhere we looked in this case and this may result in an extension of the deadline for concluding the probe initially set for the end of this month,” he said.

The 30 million baht was found to be missing from the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund, which is intended to support the education of girls from poor families, in 2007, 2008 and 2010, Mr Atthapol said.

This update on findings from the investigation was revealed one day after anti-graft authorities on Friday searched two houses owned by a C8 education official allegedly involved in the embezzlement.

The suspect, Rojana Sinthi, a senior planning and policy analysis specialist attached to the Education Ministry, has previously admitted to unlawfully taking about 88 million baht from the fund.

The panel had not obtained documents containing details of the additional funds found to have disappeared in 2007 but it learned about the missing amount in that year from an inspection of minutes from 2009 meetings of the fund’s committee, which also showed the figures of funds from 2007, Mr Atthapol said.

If the panel finds the minutes of the 2007 meetings of the fund’s committee, it may find more information about the figures of funds recorded in previous years as well, he said.

Most recently, the panel had examined the minutes of meetings of the fund’s committee in 2008, for instance, and found a budget disbursement tactic used to disburse budget twice in the same year, he said.

The fund’s committee in 2008 approved a payment of 7.5 billion baht from the fund for scholarships to students and hiring teachers at a group of schools for underprivileged students, he said.

Along with this approved payment, the committee also approved in the same year a proposal to print textbooks for disadvantaged students at a total cost of 400,000 baht, he said.

The first disbursement of the approved budget was requested through an unnamed deputy permanent-secretary for education with the authority to approve budget disbursement, he said.

The disbursement of the 7.5 million baht should have been requested directly through the finance division of the Office of the Permanent Secretary of Education, he said.

Later in July the same year, instead of requesting to disburse the 400,000 baht approved by the fund’s committee to be paid to fund the printing of the textbooks, a request to disburse 8.1 million baht was submitted to the finance division claiming to be for funding the approved scholarships and costs of hiring teachers at those schools, he said.

“The second budget-disbursement request was still approved simply because it wasn’t shown in the ministry’s financial system that the approved 7.5 million baht had already been disbursed,” he said.

All of the schools involved confirmed they had received the full amount of budget they were supposed to get that year although some had faced a delay receiving the budget, he said.

This could mean some portions of the budget paid in the first round weren’t paid to certain recipients whose payments were put on hold until more money was approved in the second round, he said.

“Since Ms Rojana was permitted to solely handle that budget, that has adversely led to her being able to embezzle the funds easily,” he said.