Guarantors for another state scholarship winner filed a multi-million baht complaint with police on Thursday, as the Dental Council set up an ethics inquiry into the behaviour of defaulting dentist Dolrudee Jumlongras.
The inquiry's outcome could affect her job with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in the United States.
Thai Dental Council president Toranin Charascharungkiat said the council resolved on Thursday to launch the ethics investigation into Ms Dolrudee's behaviour. Its ethics sub-committee will conduct the investigation this month and seek information from Ms Dolrudee and her four guarantors.
If the inquiry finds her behaviour unethical, the council would take disciplinary action in stages, from a warning to probation, and then suspension of licence and finally termination. The council would also report its finding to the Harvard School of Dental Medicine where she is employed as a tutor.
Harvard had treated the scholarship default case as a personal matter for Ms Dolrudee to settle herself, but professional ethics were a serious issue in international circles, Mr Toranin said.
Ms Dolrudee received a 10-million-baht scholarship from Mahidol University, where she was a lecturer, in 1993 to further her studies at Harvard University. She completed her PhD in 2003, but failed to return to Mahidol to work off the debt, as sent down in the scholarship. She also failed to fulfil the alternative condition and repay the scholarship's cost. Her four guarantors were finally saddled with the debt.
A senior military officer raised a similar case with police on Thursday.
At the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok, Maj Gen Kittiphop Manoonnimit, deputy director of joint civil affairs of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, accused Phatharaphorn Buathong, a former management science lecturer of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, of defaulting on her 10-million-baht scholarship for her PhD studies in the United States. He said he and the two other guarantors had faced a bankruptcy suit as a consequence.
Maj Gen Kittiphop said Mrs Phatharaphorn had been his neighbour and left for her PhD studies in the US in 1996. After completing her doctorate she returned to the university in February 2003, but about a month later obtained approval from the university to resign, he said.
In the following year, the university brought a lawsuit against her three guarantors. Mrs Phatharaphorn finally repaid 6 million baht off the scholarship, he said.
In 2014 the three guarantors faced a bankruptcy lawsuit brought by the university. They settled the case by agreeing to repay the outstanding 4 million baht in instalments, in exchange for the withdrawal of the lawsuit. Maj Gen Kittiphop said bankruptcy would have damaged his career.
Another of the guarantors who filed the complaint with him, Janthira Wisetnat, a lecturer at Thonburi Vocational College, said Mrs Phatharaphorn had once been a close friend but had since settled in the United States, leaving them with a severe financial problem.