Truth about temple cash isn’t pretty

Did the notorious Nen Kham really have sexual affairs with at least eight women while he was a monk? Did he buy a private jet and a mansion in the US which he showed off on social media? Did he sleep with a minor and father her child? Was he involved in drugs and money laundering? Were he or his brother lying beside a woman in a picture?

Now that he has been defrocked while in hiding in the US, could he be deported to stand trial in Thailand and face the music? Or could he just continue to enjoy the high life abroad?

The Nen Kham theatre has been entertaining the public for over a month now.

Many questions about the scandal have been asked. They include the question over the role of the Department of Special Investigation — whether it has helped ‘‘spin’’ the Nen Kham saga to steer the public away from the rice-pledging and the Thaksin Shinawatra-Yuthasak Sasiprapa YouTube clip scandals.

Yet the most important question has not yet been asked. It’s about the management of temple funds, or rather the lack of it. Indeed, how could the 34-yearold Wirapol Sukphol succeed in fleecing the temple’s merit-making money for so long without anyone knowing or doing something about it? Where were the financial monitoring and auditing systems?

The clergy governs 37,075 temples nationwide. It is impossible for an organisation of this gigantic size not to have a system in place to ensure temples’ proper financial management, isn’t it?

Prepare to confront the cold, hard fact — no, our temples do not have such monitoring and auditing systems.

We are talking here

about 100-120 billion baht per year

that the public donates to 37,075

temples.