Slow progress in Bt9-Bn loan investigation

Public prosecutors will spend at least one week studying an investigation report from the anti-graft agency before deciding whether to sue ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra and others for malfeasance in a Bt9-billion bank loan scandal, a senior prosecutor said yesterday.

Deputy Attorney-General Waiyawuth Lotrakul said the probe report by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which suggested suing Thaksin and others, had been forwarded to the Attorney-General for further action.

Waiyawuth said he expected the Attorney-General to assign his working group in the Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) to study the report in detail in order to determine whether certain flaws in a previous report found by the joint NACC-OAG committee had been rectified.

He said the OAG would inform the NACC if any further improvement needed to be done. He added, however, that the NACC could pursue its case alone if it disagreed with the OAG recommendations.

He expected the OAG working group to spend longer than one week on its task as there was a lot of work to do.

The NACC took over investigation of the case from the Assets Examination Committee, which expired in mid-2008. The AEC concluded that Thaksin and 31 others were at fault in connection with Bt9-billion loans extended by the state-owned Krung Thai Bank to three private companies with links to people close to certain government figures.

It was found that a large amount of money had been transferred from one of the three companies to a bank account belonging to the son of a politician in power at that time.

A source said yesterday that the OAG working group would meet on Monday to discuss who would be sued.

According to the NACC probe report, three groups of people are involved. They are public office holders, including then-prime ministerThaksin, board members and top executives of KTB, and the loan recipient companies and individuals benefiting from the loans. The companies were identified as Krisda Mahanakorn, RK Professional and Golden Technology Industrial Park.

In a related development, Sirisak Tiyaphan, director-general of the OAG's department of foreign litigation, said yesterday that the public prosecutors had completed the necessary paperwork required to seek Thaksin's extradition for prosecution in Thailand.

Sirisak said the prosecutors would soon ask the police in writing for the exact whereabouts of the fugitive ex-leader. He said he had learned that Thaksin was in Hong Kong but that his address was needed to locate him.

Last October, Thaksin was sentenced to two years in jail in connection with the Ratchadaphisek land scandal, in which his then wife won a bid to buy a coveted state-seized land plot at a price far lower than the market rate. Thaksin did not appeal the verdict by the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Political Office Holders. He described the ruling as "politically motivated".