The Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand (ACT) is urging the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) to look retroactively into the wealth of every active and retired police commander, especially highway police commanders.
ACT Secretary-General Mana Nimitmongkol said on Wednesday that he is confident that the NACC will be able to identify whether the wealth of the officers was legally acquired or not.
He stressed the need for an outsider, such as the NACC, to investigate the overloaded truck sticker scandal, rather than allowing the police to effectively investigate itself.
Each overloaded truck is alleged to have paid kickbacks, of as much as 10,000 baht or more on a monthly basis, to highway police for easy passage without being stopped for inspection.
Asked whether police officers above the rank of commander are also involved in the extortion, he said that he believes a percentage of the bribes received by the police commanders might have been passed up to their superiors, to buy their positions, or sent to their superiors on monthly basis.
Mana said that he agrees with the idea of using weight-in motion (WIM) technology, to replace the aging manually-operated weighbridges to check trucks, as proposed by a Future Forward MP-elect Wiroj Lakkhanaadisorn to solve bribe taking by highway police.
He said that the WIM technology does not cost much and would be able to solve the corruption problem to a certain extent adding, however, that the first thing to do is to identify the corrupt officers and to protect people who are willing to offer information about the malpractice.
