Published on November 18, 2005
Ambulance purchase okayed. The Office of the Attorney General and the Comptroller General’s Department signed a joint decision yesterday approving the purchase of 232 ambulances after several months of fractious squabbling among rival Public Health Ministry officials.
Explaining their joint decision, both agencies said the bidding process for the Bt340-million contract had been conducted lawfully because the ministry’s secretariat agreed that the final bidding take place through a special procedure, not through an e-auction as had originally been authorised. – The Nation.
---------------------------------- INDIAN BANK FRAUD: Fugitive arrested Police yesterday arrested a fugitive Indian banker wanted in his country for embezzling more than Bt300 million. Police caught up with Kosaraju Venkateswar Rao at his apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 21. He runs a computer and software company from a lavish office in the Millennium Building on Langsuan Road in Lumpini district. Police said Rao falsified documents and made off with more than Bt300 million of depositors’ money while he was chairman of Krushi Cooperative Urban Bank in India and fled to Thailand in March 2003. He will be soon extradited to India to face charges there. Reportedly Interpol had confirmed in July that Rao was in Thailand. – The Nation. ---------------------------------- ROGUE DRUG: 8 officers detain Eight border patrol policemen have been charged with attempted murder for shooting and injuring the mother of a drug suspect in an anti-narcotics operation in Ayutthaya late Tuesday night. Members of the team were arrested after a high-speed car chase from Ayutthaya into neighbouring Pathum Thani after they had seized Dee Nuengbunma from her home. They claimed to have found 27 amphetamine tablets in her possession. Before speeding away in a pickup truck, a border patrol policeman fired a shot at Dee’s 70-year-old mother as she emerged from her bedroom. . Lat Bua Luang police in Pathum Thani filed the charges against the officers on the grounds their arrest of Dee was unlawful. The border patrol officers had neither sought a warrant before the arrest nor had they contacted local police before raiding Dee’s home, police charged. – The Nation.
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