Five officials from the Department of Local Administration (DLA) have been put under disciplinary investigation in connection with the recent local government recruitment exam fraud, Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Thursday.
Welcoming the completion of a ministry investigation a week after it was ordered, Mr Anutin said the investigation committee, led by the ministry's deputy permanent secretary, Santitorn Yimlamai, had confirmed attempts to falsify and cheat in the recruitment examination.
"I will reveal details as much as possible without exploiting the case or interfering with evidence collected from the investigation," Mr Anutin said.
The scandal involves widespread cheating discovered in exams organised last year by the DLA, part of the Interior Ministry overseen by Mr Anutin, to recruit nearly 7,000 local administrative officials.
Thousands of participants are said to have paid between 350,000 and 800,000 baht each to ensure they passed the exams. This in turn led to the arrest of 10 people, mostly civil servants, who were caught red-handed with doctored exam results.
According to Mr Santitorn, the investigation committee summoned 15 individuals for questioning, with some submitting clarification documents.
It is also gathering as many records as possible from related parties and has sought input from technological experts.
The initial probe confirmed that contractors did not transfer checked answer sheet files to the DLA as soon as they obtained them from 10 examination locations.
Mr Santitorn added that 48 of the 79 sample sheets stored on thumb drives collected from the DLA showed mismatched scores between the answer sheets and the processed score listings, with more than half having scores in both sections of the test altered to significantly higher results.
The findings showed the DLA had failed to conduct a reverse check against the listings for candidates who passed the test's third section, a positional exam hosted by respective agencies, after receiving the results of the other two sections.
Mr Santitorn said that some information was altered before it was submitted to an official test announcement platform.
The investigation revealed that DLA officers, contractors and private companies were involved in the test falsification network, with at least five DLA officers expected to be charged with disciplinary violations, Mr Santitorn added.
The House Committee on Decentralisation and Local Administration on Thursday invited representatives of the relevant agencies to a meeting to discuss the exam fraud, but Srinakharinwirot University (SWU), which administered the exams, did not send anyone.
