A senior executive of one of the contractors for the collapsed State Audit Office (SAO) building in Bangkok testified on Tuesday about the construction contracts at the Department of Special Investigation (DSI).
Kriengsak Kovadhana, executive vice president of Italian-Thai Development Plc (ITD), was asked about the bidding process, work distribution and compensation arrangements, said Pol Lt Col Amorn Hongsrithong, director of the Bureau of Government Procurement Fraud at the DSI.
Apart from Mr Kriengsak, 10 engineers involved in the construction project were also summoned to testify on Tuesday about the authenticity of their signatures on project documents. Investigators will compare their signatures to those on the documents, Pol Lt Col Amorn said.
However, only seven responded to the summons. He said the remaining three would be contacted again if they failed to appear.
The DSI is also examining over 100 boxes of documents seized from the SAO offices on Monday. The documents related to the construction process, project supervision, financial disbursements and daily work records.
A joint inspection and clarification of the documents will take place later this week, involving DSI investigators, officials from the SAO and the Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning, as well as representatives of the joint venture handling the construction.
This review is expected to contribute significantly to the bid-rigging investigation that the DSI has been undertaking said Pol Lt Col Amorn.
The 30-storey SAO headquarters, under construction in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok, was the only high-rise structure to collapse on March 28 when an earthquake centred in Myanmar shook the Thai capital.
Dozens of workers were killed in the collapse, and retrieval operations are still going on.
Suriyachai Rawiwan, director of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office, said on Tuesday that one intact human body and five body parts were discovered in Zone B near a stairwell on Monday night. The find brings to 64 the number of bodies found, with 31 still unaccounted for.
Mr Suriyachai said searchers had reached parts of the ground floor and underground floor in Zones A and D and are currently focusing on clearing debris from Zones C2 and C3, where victims are believed to be trapped.
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