Auditors Insist Thai Democrat Campaign Boards Cost Bt29M

[webfact]

DEMOCRAT DISSOLUTION TRIAL

Auditors insist campaign boards cost Bt29m

By Kornchanok Raksaseri

The Nation

In testimony to the Constitution Court yesterday, a Democrat Party account auditor said she had not gone through the party's election expenditure with a fine-tooth comb - she only looked at the receipts randomly.

Arunee Ruaysungnoen, a 74-year-old auditor who has examined the Democrat Party's accounts for 28 years, said random inspection was common practice due to the large number of documents.

She said keeping track of the party's income and expenditure in relation to elections was under the jurisdiction of Aporn Rongngoen, the party's deputy director, who was also its accountant during the February 2005 election. Arunee was in charge of examining the party's revenue and expenses for the entire year.

Aporn, meanwhile, said she did not check every campaign board closely because of time constraints. However, she said she had asked the party's committee in charge of the election if they had received the campaign boards. She said she had checked all related documents and as she received no complaints from party candidates about the campaign boards, she approved the purchase, got the party leader's signature and paid the suppliers.

Aporn said she submitted the audited account to the Election Commission (EC) in May 2005. The EC auditors later sent her some queries, and after she clarified these, the audited account was approved.

She said that she followed the EC instructions in her audit. All the expenses were paid in the form of cheques from a specific account meant especially for the election and that only Bt50,000 was paid in cash.

Songkhla MP Wirat Kalayasiri, a Democrat legal team member, said the party argument that its accounts had been examined by a reliable auditor could not be refuted.

"The accounts of the expenses related to the election were with Aporn and the EC verified it. Meanwhile, Arunee is an experienced auditor who has been examining the party's accounts since 1982. She would have noticed if something was wrong. Both can verify that the campaign boards were produced as they saw the boards being delivered. They also verified the documents with the party's strategic committee in charge of the election campaign. All sides were sure the election campaign boards were produced as indicated, otherwise the candidates would have spoken out," Wirat said.

In court, the Democrats said that Arunee audited the accounts of 80 other clients, including famous companies, and that there had never been any complaints about her work before.

Yesterday was the third hearing for the case in which the Democrat Party is accused of not using the entire Bt29 million it received from the EC for campaign support. If found guilty, the party could be dissolved and its executives banned from politics for five years.

The party has insisted that it did spend the money on election campaign boards as initially proposed and that the EC and reliable auditors verified the accounts.

The final hearing is on Monday, when Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will present his testimony as party leader. Abhisit was deputy party leader at the time of the controversy.

Nakhon Nayok MP Charnchai Isarasenarak, who was deputy secretary-general at the time, led the party committee in charge of the 2005 election.

Charnchai, one of the witnesses yesterday, said the party did spend Bt29 million on election campaign boards, which were different in size and cost amounts other than those listed in the proposal. However, the EC later approved its request for changes.

He added that the party's executives had also acknowledged the changes.

Another witness, former charter drafter Komsan Pokong, said the case might be deemed invalid according to the 1998 Political Party Act because it was up to the political party registrar to decide whether to file the case.

EC chairman Apichart Sukhagganond, who is also political party registrar, was the only EC member who opposed filing the dissolution case against the party in April, he said. Since Apichart, as political party registrar, alone had the authority to file the case, the lawsuit against the Democrat Party was unlawful from the very beginning.

It was still undecided which version of the Political Party Act - the 1998 one or that from 2007 - would be used to judge the case. But the alleged wrongdoing happened in 2004 and 2005.

If the 2007 Political Party Act was used, the political party registrar needed the EC's approval before filing a case. However, since Apichart never wanted to file the case, it was not up to other EC members to make the decision, Komsan said.

Isara Limsiriwong, head of an EC investigation panel, claimed that the EC never wanted to file a case against the Democrats. He said his panel had looked into the case three times before and that the members had unanimously said they did not want to file the case. He said Apichart had made the decision as party registrar.

-- The Nation 2010-10-12

[tonglen]

Dichotomous words you dont hear together too often.....Politicians + Accounting + Verifying + Accuracy =

Inaccurate political accounting with no verification.

[asiawatcher]

29M Baht is a lot of green for some 'boards". Someone got a great kickback! LOL.