Scanner skirmish
Auditor-General Jaruvan Maintaka yesterday dismissed an appeal by deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra that she and two of her colleagues should quit a panel investigating the CTX 9000 bomb-scanner purchase.
She said Thaksin's lawyer had asked the Assets Examination Commission (AEC) to replace herself, Paitoon Tippayathas as a legal director of the Auditor-General's Office (AGO) and Pol Colonel Chaithas Rattanaphan as an AGO investigative director with people who were neutral. He alleged that all three had been involved with the case from the beginning and could thus be biased. The AEC rejected the appeal, Jaruvan said. "Had the AEC bowed to this claim, the three of us wouldn't be able to carry out any investigations, because all cases of graft go to the AGO," she said. In another AEC case, Viroj Laohaphan, head of the panel probing the tax-free sale of Shin Corp shares to Temasek, said he had asked Kanjanapa Honghern, the personal secretary of Thaksin's wife Pojaman, to submit documents within five days proving that Ample Rich Investments Co Ltd had been shut down. Earlier, Kanjanapa reportedly told the panel that she had taken responsibility for transacting the historic Bt73.3-billion sale of Shin shares to Singapore on behalf of the Shinawatra and Damapong families and had also handled the purchase of Shin shares by Thaksin's children Panthongtae and Pinthongta from Ample Rich for Bt1 each through Swiss bank UBS. The Nation
|
