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"Someone will be held responsible for this. The investigation results could be a bit slow, but it remains within the time frame issued by Deputy Finance Minister Pradit Pataraprasit. We want to ensure fairness to all," he said.

The investigative committee, chaired by Sophawadee Lertmanuschai, has recently completed the questioning of high-ranking GH Bank executives down to operating officers.

Its initial findings are that aside from employee dishonesty, the embezzlement resulted from poor internal communications and a lack of understanding in the Core Banking System (CBS).

Naris said this meant the bank needed to upgrade its supervision.

In the next stage, individuals involved in or having caused the embezzlement will be named and made subject to disciplinary action, he added.

In May, a senior bank official, Somkiat Panyaworrakuldej, was arrested for allegedly transferring a total of Bt499 million from a communal GH Bank account that stored interest set to be paid out to customers. The suspect is said to have transferred about Bt900,000 from GH Bank to his own accounts every day for more than a year.

According to a source in the Finance Ministry, the investigative panel also found that much of the problem rested with the CBS, which cost Bt600 million to set up in 2005. The system has caused a string of problems, on which the bank has spent an additional Bt800 million to fix.

"Totally, the bank has invested a total of Bt1.4 billion in the system. Is the system stabilised now? The answer is 'No'. The bank will need to set up another committee to solve the problems, in order to restore public confidence," the source said.

The source added that at the bank's Phetchaburi branch, 82 depositors with time-deposit accounts had reported problems with their interest payments. One depositor received monthly interest of Bt76,000, though he was entitled to only Bt3,700.

Another, however, found that his balance had dropped from Bt3.6 million to Bt3.1 million, with no knowledge of where the missing Bt500,000 could be, while a borrower was subjected to a penalty rate even though he had already made his repayment on schedule.

The CBS is intended to be an electronic linkage of GH Bank's back office and front office, supporting deposits/withdrawals, lending, accounting, loan recall and legal actions. The goal is to support the e-banking service and reach out to more retail clients. All 75 branches and 28 sub-branches will be linked with 20 operating service centres and 15 service counters.

In 2005, Infosys Technologies was commissioned to install the system, and the work was subcontracted to Datamat. Due to financial problems, Datamat had to jointly undertake the project with another listed company, Superblock.

The system entered operation in 2007, but has produced errors since. For example, the interest-calculating programme did not work, and there was no change in some borrowers' accounts after instalment payments were made.

GH Bank president Khan Prachuabmoh admitted earlier that these problems were because the system had not been stabilised and that personnel lacked understanding of how it should operate.

Infosys's team was dispatched to work with the bank from July to September last year in fixing the hardware and connection linkage.