Italian-Thai executive and engineers report to DSI for questioning

A senior executive and seven engineers from Italian-Thai Development Plc reported to the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) today for questioning, regarding their roles and responsibilities in the construction of the State Audit Office building, which collapsed on March 28 as a result of tremors from the devastating earthquake in Myanmar.

Pol Lt-Col Amorn Hongsrithong, chief of the bid-rigging cases division, said that the investigation today will focus on their signatures on related documents and their roles in the project.

At least two engineers have previously claimed that their signatures had been falsified and that they had nothing to do with the project.

Regarding the senior executive, Kriengsak Kovadhana, Amorn said that DSI officers will question him about several matters, beginning with the bidding for the project, the distribution of construction work among subcontractors and their payments.

Ten Italian-Thai engineers are to be questioned, seven of whom reported to the DSI today. The rest are yet to contact the department.

Meanwhile, two trucks equipped with heavy-duty drilling equipment were deployed to the site of the collapsed SAO building today, to drill into the underground chamber of the collapsed building, where several sets of human remains are believed to be buried.

Suriyachai Rawiwan, chief of the Public Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department, of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, said today that the drilling machinery will be used to get through several layers of concrete slab, to open a channel into the underground chamber near the Zone B fire exit.

He disclosed that the search team found one more body and human body parts last night, around the staircase in Zone B, adding that workers have been trying to cut through an intricate web of tangled rebar in zones C2 and C3, to reach a location through which some trapped people had tried to escape.

He said that search teams have encountered five layers of concrete slab blocking the underground fire exit, posing a major challenge for the drilling equipment. He is, however, optimistic that the team would be able to get to the fire exit in Zone B tonight.