The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is preparing to seize the house of former cabinet minister Somsak Prisana-anantakul, who is suspected of being unusually wealthy.
President Panthep Klanarongran said on Saturday that the NACC would send the case to the attorney-general to prosecute Mr Somsak and to have his 16-million-baht house in Wiset Chai Chan district of Ang Thong confiscated.
The NACC decided at a meeting on Friday that it had grounds to proceed against the former education minister from the Chartthaipattana Party.
Officials said Mr Somsak started building the house in 1998 when he was a deputy education minister. The construction, costing 16 million baht, was completed in 2001.
The majority vote of 6-3 by the NACC reflected its view that Mr Somsak could not satisfactorily explain where the money to build the house came from, said Mr Panthep.
"The NACC will meet again to formally endorse Friday's resolution," he said. "The case will then be sent to the Attorney General's Office in two weeks to file a case against him with the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Positions to consider seizing the house to become a national asset.
"Mr Somsak will have to defend himself before the court."
However, the NACC decided the land plot of three rai and 24.1 square wah on which the house is located could not be seized, since Mr Somsak could prove he was in possession of it before he became a cabinet minister in 1998.
"But the house in question was built after he became a minister," Mr Panthep said. "There's no question the house belongs to him. In his earlier asset declaration, it was stated clearly that the house was his."
Mr Somsak, 64, a nine-time Ang Thong MP, was banned from politics for five years because the Chart Thai party, of which he was an executive, was ordered dissolved along with two other coalition parties by the Constitutional Court in 2008.
He later joined Chartthaipattana, the party formed after the dissolution by former Chart Thai leader Banharn Silpa-archa.