King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) has issued a statement accusing Siam Commercial Bank of failing to submit key evidence in a case where 1.6 billion baht disappeared from its bank accounts.
The papers are withdrawal slips of the stolen sums and a copy of the bank's investigation report on Songklod Sriprasong, a prime suspect who was formerly SCB branch manager.
The move followed an SCB executive's comments on Tuesday that the bank should not be held responsible for the scam since it acted only as "a pipe" for the money flow.
While police have made much progress in the case, a key piece of evidence has yet to be submitted to them, the statement said.
"We would like to ask the bank to send withdrawal slips and all documents related to the case to police. We believe they can prove whether Mr Songklod is guilty. We also urge the bank to find people who collaborated with the theft and verify that the bank was not involved.
"After our executive met a vice-president of SCB, we learned that Mr Songklod had resigned from the bank after it set up a committee to look into his behaviour. It found he had skipped some steps in approving withdrawals from our accounts — allowing the cash to be drawn without the signatures of our authorised executives or possibly without withdrawal slips altogether.
"Although this is a serious breach of discipline bordering on corruption, the bank did not report the irregularities to us," the statement said.
"In fact, Mr Songklod should have been fired and the bank should have taken legal action against him. Instead, the bank said it told Mr Songklod to bring the documents for our executives to sign and simply asked him to leave," the statement said.
"Such a solution has eroded our confidence in the bank. We'd like to know whether our authorised signatories had really signed the withdrawal slips retroactively for the bank. As is the custom, a withdrawal slip must be attached to a letter seeking approval. These documents are kept by the bank and it must give them to investigators."
KMITL also said SCB should have an early-warning system for such irregularities and informed it or reported the case to the Bank of Thailand. Instead, the bank had done nothing until KMITL found out about the missing cash by itself.
"Of note, all the stolen money was in term deposit accounts and was drawn prematurely in large sums multiple times. When the bank learned about Mr Songklod's suspicious behaviour, it did not report to the Anti-Money Laundering Office. Instead, it asked him to resign, which allowed him to get a job at Bank of Ayudhya and continued to steal money from our accounts there."
KMITL said due to these reasons it was reconsidering all transactions with SCB for the financial security of its staff and students.
"We hope the case will be an example for the public and encourage people to be cautious and deal only with financial institutions that really meet standards.
In its defence, SCB insisted it had cooperated fully with police and KMITL from the start by assigning its crime prevention staff to join the investigation team and follow the money trail.