The Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) has identified three possible flaws in the Education Ministry's handling of its fund to help vulnerable girls, which possibly led to the embezzlement scandal involving more than 120 million baht in estimated losses.
Pol Gen Jarumporn Suramanee, a PACC commissioner, revealed them Tuesday as he gave an update on the PACC's probe into the alleged embezzlement of money from the ministry's Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund (SPCF), which is intended to support the education of girls from poor families.
One possible flaw was the fact that the names of students entitled to receive scholarships from the fund were not indicated in scholarship application documents submitted by schools for approval by the fund's committee, said Pol Gen Jarumporn.
The second was that no mechanism was in place to follow up on scholarship payments to ensure students awarded the scholarships actually received the money, he said.
The third problem with the fund, he said, was suspected collusion by certain officials at the ministry.
He said PACC investigators made inquiries about certain scholarships with several ministry officials only to be told they were not available when in fact these scholarships were, and had already been paid for by the ministry.
The PACC now aims to dig deeper to find out which officials gave such false information, he said.
The PACC will next send a formal request to the permanent secretary for education for a copy of the regulations on approving scholarship payments under the SPCF.
PACC investigators will need this when determining which criminal charges should be pressed against suspects in the embezzlement scandal, he said.
The regulations should also help shed light on why Rojana Sinthi, a senior planning and policy analysis specialist attached to the Education Ministry, was the only person assigned to record the minutes of the scholarship payment approval committee, he said.
This same information may hold the answer to something that has been puzzling PACC investigators -- why Ms Rojana had the final say over the payments when this should normally have been done by the permanent secretary or his deputies, Pol Gen Jarumporn said.
Ms Rojana, who was sacked on Monday, may next face civil cases and be held liable for the losses, he said.
The PACC says the probe into financial transactions carried out by Ms Rojana found that 89.9 million of the 173 million baht transferred from the SPCF between 2008 and 2018 were transferred to 22 bank accounts owned by her relatives.
By the time the ministry became aware of the possible embezzlement and began investigating, the 22 accounts had already been closed and the money transferred to another 31 accounts, he said.
Last week, the PACC discovered a further 30 million baht was missing from the SPCF, bringing the total estimated loss to about 120 million baht.
In 2017 alone, a total of 12.8 million baht from the SPCF was transferred via 52 transactions to 18 bank accounts owned by 10 different people, said an informed source.