Two national politicians and a local politician are set to be formally implicated in the investigation into the fire truck corruption scandal by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) next week, senior DSI official Thawee Sodsong said yesterday.

Thawee refused to name the three individuals, merely referring to them as "senior-level figures in this country". There are other people involved in the scandal, in which Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) officials and management staff are accused of benefiting from buying over-priced fire trucks from Austria.

A joint DSI working panel comprising DSI investigators and public prosecutors will meet next Tuesday to reach a conclusion over the case before implicating the three politicians along with BMA officials and certain contractors involved in the fire truck purchase contract worth Bt6.8 billion.

A DSI source said the investigation had found that the fire truck prices were highly inflated in the contract between the BMA and Austrian manufacturer, Steyr Daimler Puch.

The panel was considering separating the prosecution channels against those implicated. The National Counter Corruption Commission would handle the three politicians and charges against BMA officials and contractors and construction companies would be filed with the Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, Bangkok Governor and deputy Democrat Party leader Apirak Kosayodhin, said his party had concluded he should not formally accept the 176 fire trucks now in the BMA's custody - before calling off the entire purchase deal with Steyr, which involves another 139 trucks and 30 fireboats that have yet to be made.

Apirak said he was still waiting to discuss the issue with Interior Minister Kongsak Vantana, even after Permanent Secretary Sujarit Pajchimnant issued a letter dated Monday saying the BMA could decide the issue on its own.

He called on the public to decide whether the Interior Ministry's letter was a suggestion that it refused to take responsibility jointly with the BMA over the fire truck scandal. Apirak said the purchase contract involved the BMA and Steyr, plus the Interior Ministry and the Austrian ambassador who signed the AOU. "Most importantly, the BMA functions under direct supervision of the ministry," he added.

Deputy Bangkok Governor Buddhipongse Punakanta denied a finding by a BMA-appointed commission led by former university rector Boonserm Weesakul into the fire truck purchase deal. Publicly released recently in an edited version, it favoured the BMA.

He said the entire investigation paper had never been made public but was actually sent to four government agencies including the Interior Ministry. The reason for not making it public was because Boonserm was worried he and six other panel members could face criminal libel and civil lawsuits for naming people they had found implicated in the deal.