This sentiment was echoed by the new secretary-general of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) when he was asked to reflect on the PACC’s decade-long war on rogue behaviour.
“We have so many corruption problems that the PACC and NACC alone can’t completely eliminate them,” Pol Lt Col Wannop Somjintanakul told the Bangkok Post, referring to allied organisation, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which also faces a similarly heavy workload.
But Pol Lt Col Wannop refuses to make excuses and insists his investigators are going full steam ahead on as many cases as possible despite criticism that they do not act quickly enough against corrupt officials.
However, he concedes there have been delays in some cases.
“To put it bluntly, I have to admit we aren’t aware of every [corruption] case,” he said, blaming a lack of knowledge of irregularities for a slow response to some misconduct.
The embezzlement of subsidies in state-run schools is one example.
Evidence of the crime was found in more than 50% of the 30,000 schools randomly checked by the PACC.
Indeed, the culprits would have got away scot-free had PACC investigators not received complaints in the first place.
“The ‘ghost student’ scandal only came to light after a school director lodged a complaint,” Pol Lt Col Wannop said.
This is the name given to a scam involving fictitious students who appeared on school enrolment documents and was first reported in 2018.
School directors were found claiming higher student numbers than they actually had to receive inflated financial assistance from the government.
The PACC conducted nationwide checks on schools supervised by the Office of Basic Education (Obec) after a new director of Kham Sakae Saeng School in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Kham Sakae district blew the whistle on the hustle.
The school reported to the Obec it had enrolled 1,510 students, but the new school director noticed the true number was only 1,319.
“According to the PACC probe, crooked directors fabricated the numbers to grant them the right to additional budget,” Pol Lt Col Wannop said.
“We’ve still not dug into whether any of the embezzled money was also paid to colluding state officials,” he said.
Witness accounts claimed some of the subsidies were siphoned off for educational equipment and building maintenance bills, but they did not have proof.
Pol Lt Col Wannop said this case awakened his team to previously unnoticed flaws in the bureaucratic system.
Complaints about delays into the investigation of cases are typified by the snail’s pace of the probe into the rice-pledging scandal, which is years old but still ongoing.
During the Pheu Thai-led government of 2011-14, a policy was introduced to help farmers which involved buying their rice at artificially high prices and storing it in contracted warehouses.
Irregularities in the contracts were discovered and the PACC began to look into the matter in 2017.
The programme caused hundreds of billions of baht in state losses and did little to ease the poverty of farmers.
It was also criticised for being inefficient, fraught with loopholes, and benefiting only intermediaries. The investigation remains ongoing.
“The probe has been carried out at a speed that may dissatisfy many people, but we need to ensure fairness for both sides,” Pol Lt Col Wannop said.
This scandal is divided into 993 separate cases, mostly occurring between 2011 and 2012, and interviews with a large number of witnesses and experts have been necessary, according to the PACC chief.
“We’ve already decided to lodge indictments in most of the cases,” Pol Lt Col Wannop said.
Thorough investigations and good decision-making are both hallmarks of the PACC’s remit and also Pol Lt Col Wannop’s career, observers say.
Pol Lt Col Wannop studied law at Ramkhamhaeng University before going to work with the Department of Special Investigation.
In both his studies and that initial post with the DSI, he learned how to exercise due caution and assiduity to secure convictions in complex, often high-profile, criminal cases.
His current work at the PACC is no exception, but he acknowledges the sheer number of complaints his team receives places a strain on the department’s resources, sparking complaints when probes do not go as quickly as hoped.
Since its creation in 2008, 35,826 complaints have rolled in to the PACC.
The investigators have so far considered over half of them and agreed to take on 4,721 for further inquiry, he said.
“It is true Thailand has not made significant progress in the Corruption Perceptions Index [prepared by Transparency International], but our anti-graft officials never stop working,” he said.
“PACC’s officers never take a breather. They’re fighting corruption night and day.”
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