About 5,000 people on Wednesday petitioned the Anti-Money Laundering Office to investigate an Education Ministry welfare fund that allegedly defrauded 150,000 teachers nationwide out of 5 billion baht through a corrupt insurance programme.
Leading a group representing 5,000 teachers, Songkran Achariyasap filed a complaint directly with Amlo secretary-general Seehanat Prayoonrat. With the petition he submitted about 5,000 letters of complaint from victims of the alleged fraud.
Mr Songkran said that about 150,000 teacher-members of a funeral-service fund run by the Education Ministry's Welfare Promotion Commission for Teachers and Educational Personnel took out loans that required them to buy life insurance to cover repayment in case of their death.
Borrowers were told a state-run bank and a state-run insurance firm would arrange the 10-year policies and premiums would be deducted from their amount loaned, Mr Songkran explained.
However, teachers later discovered they had been sold health and accident insurance, which cost members a total of 5 billion baht, he said.
Alleging large-scale corruption, victims of the scam also planned to file police complaints in their local jurisdictions on May 31, he added.
Mr Seehanat said Amlo would quickly investigate the case.