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Published on September 13, 2007

Nam said the Bank of Thailand, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Anti-Money Laundering Commission and the National Counter Corruption Commis-sion must investigate the allegation that Thaksin had transferred more than Bt8 billion out of the country.

Deputy Finance Minister Sommai Phasee and former foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai were both summoned to testify before the AEC over alleged corruption in telecommunications excise tax policy, a source said.

Sommai was deputy permanent secretary at the Finance Ministry when the policy was being drafted.

Surakiart was also questioned about how the Thaksin government had ratified the free-trade agreement with Australia in the telecoms field.

The AEC will today meet with the Foreign Ministry deputy permanent secretary to discuss the translation of the CTX bomb-scanner contract.

The anti-graft agency insisted it would not hire a private firm to translate the document because the US State Depart-ment had asked Thailand to keep the document strictly confidential.

Foreign Ministry deputy permanent secretary Cholchi-neepan Chiranond will today talk to Auditor-General Jaru-van Maintaka over the problem of the ministry not being able to complete the translation in time.

Foreign Ministry spokes-man Piriya Khempol said the AEC had received 500 pages of the document in January and 1,442 pages in July, which it rejected because of the lack of translators. The AEC did not indicate which parts of the document were urgently needed.

The Nation