Following complaints filed against the company that won the procurement bid for the Bt1-billion scheme, the department found that the cards supplied did not meet the requirements, Colonel Suchart Wonganantchai, the commander of DSI's special crime division, said.

A requirement under the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the bid agreed between the Information and Communications Technology Ministry and the bidders was that the card be made of fire-proof plastic or that it be coated with a fire retardant so if it was set alight the fire would be self-extinguished within 10 seconds, Suchart said.

The committee responsible for drafting the specifications of the ID card told the DSI that they had tested the fire-retardant quality of a number of cards made by the winning company and all were completely destroyed by fire, he said.

This should have disqualified the company from the beginning, but it was still allowed to continue and finally won the bid with the lowest price, Suchart said.

He said the company offered to provide the cards at Bt30 apiece compared to the average price of Bt70 offered by the other bidders.

The DSI will continue its investigation into the scheme, he said.