The Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) plans to request the ministry overseeing 34 provincial state welfare centres to consider taking disciplinary action against their heads after investigations confirmed fraudulent conduct.
PACC secretary-general Kornthip Daroj Tuesday said the 34 centres were in a group of 37 which had been urgently investigated by the PACC over the embezzlement of state funds intended for helping the underprivileged at more than 1 million baht each.
The other threes centres, in Prachin Buri, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Sing Buri, will be subject to another round of investigation, said Lt Col Kornthip, adding irregularities in the procurement of blankets had been noted at the Sing Buri centre.
The nationwide investigation by the PACC into all 76 provincial centres for low-income earners and the destitute has so far found fraud at 56 centres and 96 suspects have been named, he said.
The names of the suspects and information about their misconduct have been forwarded to the Social Development and Human Security Ministry (SDHSM) which will consider what, if any, disciplinary action to take, he said.
Of the 56 centres where fund embezzlement was proved, 43 face further investigation to bring the culprits to justice, he said, adding that the PACC will tomorrow appoint more panels for the task.
While investigating the scandal, the PACC received information from members of the public that there were also people who were not working at the centres involved in the fraud, and Lt Col Kornthip said that a special panel had been set up to look into their role in the criminal activities.
The panel has so far implicated three high-level officials and one lower-level one at the SDHSM, another civil servant outside and a retired official as being involved in suspected fraud in which money allocated to the provincial centres was tracked to have been returned to bank accounts of people linked to the accused, said Lt Col Kornthip.
However, he said, since this part of the investigation involves suspects who are very high-level civil servants against whom the PACC lacks authority to probe, it will forward its findings to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which actually has the authority to investigate these officials.
The embezzlement scandal came to light in Khon Kaen in January when a group of Maha Sarakham University students claimed the local centre chief and other senior officials ordered them to fill in forms and fake signatures on receipts for 2,000 villagers amounting to nearly 7 million baht.
They were working as interns at the Khon Kaen Protection for the Destitute Centre last year.
In an associated probe by the PACC into suspected fund embezzlement at a development centre for highlanders in Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai's coordination centre for the San Kamphaeng cooperatives and five self-help settlement schemes, which are under the care of SDHSM as well, the PACC board has already concluded its investigations at three of the self-help settlement schemes and forwarded the findings to the NACC.
The PACC is continuing to look into allegations of fraud at the rest of these establishments.