Lessons from the Klong Dan court ruling
Last Friday the 13th must have been horrible for the 11 defendants involved in a court case involving fraud in the 23-billionbaht Klong Dan wastewater treatment project — a state infrastructure which has been built but left largely unused in Samut Prakan.
On that day, the Supreme Court handed jail terms of 3-6 years to 11 defendants including veteran politician Vatana Asavahame for his role in the illegal purchase of a 1,900-rai plot of public coastal land. The other 10 defendants, executives of joint-venture firms, were also found guilty of involvement in illegal contracts to build the facility.
However, six of the 11 defendants including Vatana did not show up in court. The veteran politician fled the country a decade ago ahead of the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions’ ruling in a separate case which handed him a 10 year-jail term for corruption.
The other five defendants, big names in the construction industry, were taken to jail at the end of the court session.
For me, the ruling teaches four valuable lessons.
First: The big fish have been caught and punished for their roles in corruption. Any high-ranking officials, politicians and company executives thinking about graft or fraud in public projects will now have to think twice.
The Klong Dan project case involved three high-ranking officials from the Pollution Control Department already fighting a separate case in the Appeal Court. In 2015, the Criminal Court gave each of them a 20-year prison term for corruption in the project and sooner or later, they will face the music.
Second: Ordinary people can play a role in tackling corruption. If they have a good heart and persistence, they can make a difference. The Klong Dan scandal captured the attention of the media and authorities because local fishermen protested against it.
Third: This graft case imparts us with a better understanding of “policy corruption”. Having followed this case for over 15 years, I have to thank this project for teaching me to question the “experts”. Fraud in this project involved a shrewd tactic of using a series of complex scientific and engineering tricks.
Let me share some of the complex tactics in the “mother of all graft cases”.
Initiated in 1997 by Suwat Liptapallop, science minister at the time, the wastewater treatment plant was designed to treat toxic wastewater from factories. The project was funded by the Asian Development Bank and was said to be the largest wastewater treatment facility in Asia.
A foreign consulting firm had originally advised the construction of many smaller plants or two bigger facilities but the design was later changed on the advice of different science ministers.
The final decision was to build a single large facility and that made the construction cost balloon from 13 billion baht to 23 billion baht. Ten billion baht more!
A larger plant meant the need for more land. Vatana, in his capacity as deputy interior minister, bribed officials to issue title deeds to him for public land that was later sold to the project at an inflated price of 1.9 billion baht.
The new design also led for a need to build a 150-km underground pipe to collect wastewater from factories located on the west side of the inner Gulf of Thailand to the facility in the east side of the gulf in Klong Dan, a fishing village. It was estimated that the electricity cost for pumping and transporting wastewater was 1 million baht per day. Yes, per day. Not per month or year!
Fourth: The last lesson is for us to think about what we should do with the white elephant itself. The Wastewater Management Authority in 2015 spent 30 million baht on hiring Kasetsart University to conduct a study on how to make use of the inactive and ageing infrastructure.
The study found that 95% of the facility including the pipeline had fallen into disrepair because of exposure to seawater. It is reported that the state pays 8 million baht a year for its security and upkeep.
There are several opinions on how to make use of the facility. One proposal worth listening to is from local people who suggest that it should be used as an aquatic research centre or a water park while turning the nearby mangrove forests into a tourist site.
Their ideas might not be music to taxpayers’ ears but I think they’re worth a debate. I wish the authorities would allow society as a whole to have a say on whether we should throw more money to revive the Klong Dan facility or whether we should bury its original purpose once and for all and then recycle the whole thing for better use.