Corruption watchdog fired for being ‘unusually wealthy’

[reader]

From Thai PBS World

Deputy secretary-general of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Prayad Puangchampa, was dismissed from service today (Monday), after he was found to be unusually wealthy by amassing 658 million baht in assets, many of which are being kept abroad.

NACC Chairman Pol Gen Watcharaphol Prasarnratchakit signed an order dismissing Prayad from government service today. The NACC also agreed that his assets should be confiscated and become state property.

The NACC faulted Prayad for allegedly deliberately concealing his assets by providing false statements about six of them when he assumed the post as deputy secretary-general on January 4^th, 2017.

The assets he allegedly attempted to conceal include six items, worth about two million baht, in the country and under the name of his spouse Thanipa, and four other items located abroad since 2019, worth about 225 million baht.

[vinapu]

there is saying that best policemen are former criminals so may be it was right place to work for such corrupt person

[PeterRS]

The NACC has been a toothless tiger for decades. Some of its own members have also been accused of being unusually wealthy. The present acting Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwun, then a member of the NACC, was accused in a much publicised affair of having a large number of undeclared expensive wrist watches. The President of the NACC promised a "professional, transparent inquiry" in January 2018. But the President had earlier been a subordinate of Prawit! By August 2018 with this seemingly simple Inquiry still far from complete, the Prime Minister removed Prawit from the NACC. That December Prawit was cleared of wrongdoing by the NACC! The basis of the decision was that he had allegedly only borrowed them!

Earlier in the 2000s there was a major scandal over the founding of the Bangkok FIlm Festival. In a 2007 case in the USA a pair of producers who worked for the Festival were jailed in 2010 for having given kickbacks to the Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Jutamas Siriwan, and her daughter which the TAT ran from 2003 to 2006. Even though the US Dept. of Justice had provided Thailand with all the evidence, the NACC took FIVE years to complete its own investigations! At least in this case Jutamas and her daugher were finally charged and given multi-decade jail terms.

SInce the military coup in 2014 activists have accused the regime of numerous cases of nepotism. One involved corruption in the construction of the billiion baht Rajabhaki Park Complex in Hua Hin built by the army. The NACC disimissed all such cases.

More instances of this country having a very different set of laws for the rich and elite! 

[unicorn]